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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. Pampin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 4 | November 2006 | Pages 528-537
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1276
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lithium-lead is a candidate tritium-generating material in conceptual designs of magnetic fusion power plants. Its prolonged utilization, ultimately during the entire lifetime of such a facility, has the potential to minimize amounts of active waste and improve the economic performance. Limits to a prolonged use are production of long-lived radioactive waste and depletion of lithium and reduction of the tritium production rate to levels where self-sufficiency is compromised. The methodology and calculations performed to estimate the transmutation of LiPb following its prolonged irradiation in two of the models in the European Power Plant Conceptual Study are presented. It is shown that no waste requiring permanent disposal is expected regardless of the irradiation length. Time-dependent tritium generation is discussed: Lithium replenishment seems unavoidable, but depletion rates are found to be lower than assumed in the design. The effect of the LiPb flow pattern in the irradiation history proves to be crucial in order to support these results.