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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.
Abraham J. Fetterman, Nathaniel J. Fisch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 136-139
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11592
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Centrifugal mirrors use supersonic rotation to provide axial confinement and enhanced stability. Usually the rotation is produced using electrodes, but these electrodes have limited the rotation to the Alfven critical ionization velocity, which is too slow to be useful for fusion. Instead, the rotation could be produced using radio frequency waves. A fixed azimuthal ripple is a simple and efficient wave that could produce rotation by harnessing alpha particle energy. This is an extension of the alpha channeling effect. The alpha particle power and efficiency in a simulated devices is sufficient to produce rotation without external energy input. By eliminating the need for electrodes, this opens new opportunities for centrifugal traps.