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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.
J. Nazon, E. Brun, F. Durut, M. Theobald, O. Legaie
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 139-147
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11516
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to decrease the wall absorption of hohlraums during the laser-matter interaction encountered in X-ray indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion, a thick layer of depleted uranium (DU) and gold alloy can be deposited on the inner surface of the hohlraums. Such a coating can be achieved by sputtering simultaneously DU and gold directly into the hohlraums. This technique is called "moulding PVD." In order to validate the moulding PVD technique, Au/Mo cocktail layers were deposited on glass substrates by simultaneous multitarget sputtering. Molybdenum is used for deposition of cocktail alloys since it shows the same sputtering yields as uranium. Au/Mo cocktail layers can be easily grown on glass substrates at any desired composition and controlled thickness by optimizing the deposition parameters. A major issue of DU deposition is its rapid delamination in contact with water, air, or hydrogen. To protect the DU/Au alloy, a thin coating of dense gold is sputtered on the DU alloy. Dense and low-stress gold thin films deposited on glass substrates have been achieved by optimization of processing parameters. The effect of such a coating has been quantified thanks to the study of praseodymium oxidation (which is more sensitive to delamination than DU). A gold coating thickness of 0.2 m thoroughly decreases the oxidation rate of praseodymium in contact with air.