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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. Bhandarkar, T. Parham, J. Fair
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 51-57
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-3718
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For the various tuning as well as ignition campaigns, targets on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) need to be filled with gases, typically with the different isotopes of H2 and He. Fill tubes that supply the two small chambers in the target, the capsule and the hohlraum, are microcapillaries that are only tens of microns in diameter and present significant impedance to flow. Knowledge of the exact pressures and gas compositions in the capsule and the hohlraum is critical for fielding targets on NIF. This requires modeling of the gas flow through the capillary tubes, at both room temperature and cryogenic temperatures. We present results from a comprehensive model and its experimental verification for a range of conditions such as temperature and pressure.