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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.
A. Robinson, L. El-Guebaly, D. Henderson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 715-719
Nuclear Analysis & Experiments | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Currently, there is an ongoing international effort to develop and characterize W alloys that are suitable for fusion applications. In this report, five key W alloys were examined for the advanced divertor design of ARIES-ACT - the latest ARIES tokamak design. The most promising alloys appear to be W-1.1TiC and W-La2O3. At the end of the divertor lifetime (~4 years), the maintenance dose of these alloys very closely matches those of W with nominal impurities. Unfortunately, even with pure W, the divertor is not clearable, which indicates that it must be recycled or disposed of in a geological repository. The radiation damage and transmutation are expected to degrade the physical properties of any material. The radiation damage level in W is low compared to ferritic steel - a remarkable feature for tungsten. For ARIES-ACT operating conditions, transmutation of W does not appear to present a significant issue.