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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.
R. D. Stambaugh, V. S. Chan, A. M. Garofalo, M. Sawan, D. A. Humphreys, L. L. Lao, J. A. Leuer, T. W. Petrie, R. Prater, P. B. Snyder, J. P. Smith, C. P. C. Wong
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 279-307
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST59-279
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To move to a fusion DEMO power plant after ITER, a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) is needed in addition to ITER and research in operating tokamaks and those under construction. The FNSF will enable research on how to utilize and deal with the products of fusion reactions, addressing such issues as how to extract the energy from neutrons and alpha particles into high-temperature process heat streams to be either used directly or converted to electricity, how to make tritium from the neutrons and lithium, how to deal with the effects of the neutrons on the blanket structures, and how to manage the first wall surface erosion caused by the alpha particle heat appearing as low-energy plasma fluxes to those surfaces. Two candidates for the FNSF are considered in this paper: normal and low aspect ratio copper magnet tokamaks. The methods of selecting optimum machine design points versus aspect ratio are fully presented. The two options are compared and contrasted; both options appear viable.