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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
S. W. Haan, J. D. Salmonson, D. S. Clark, D. D. Ho, B. A. Hammel, D. A. Callahan, C. J. Cerjan, M. J. Edwards, S. P. Hatchett, O. L. Landen, J. D. Lindl, B. J. Macgowan, M. M. Marinak, D. H. Munro, H. F. Robey, B. K. Spears, L. J. Suter, R. P. Town, S. V. Weber, D. C. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 1-7
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-3723
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Targets intended to produce ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) are being simulated, and the simulations are used to set specifications for target fabrication. Recent design work has focused on incorporating the implications of NIF experiments that were done in fall 2009 and planning for the campaign in 2010. Near-term experiments will use Ge-doped CH, although Be and diamond are still under active consideration for 2011 and beyond. The emphasis in this paper will be on changes in the requirements over the last year, the characteristics of the 2010 CH-ablator design, and the designs for 2011 and beyond. Capsule defects of particular interest are surface perturbations on the CH ablator and composition variations in the Be shells. Complete tables of specifications are regularly updated for all of the targets. All the specifications are rolled together into an error budget indicating adequate margin for ignition with all of the designs.