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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.
Sümer Sahin, Haci Mehmet Sahin, Adem Acir
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 250-255
Fusion-Fission Hybrids and Transmutation | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13428
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large quantities of weapon grade (WG) plutonium have been accumulated in the nuclear warheads. Plutonium and heavy water moderator can give a good combination with respect to neutron economy. TRISO type fuel can withstand very high fuel burn up levels. The paper investigates the prospects of utilization of TRISO fuel made of WG-plutonium in CANDU reactors. Three different fuel compositions have been investigated: 1: 90 % ThC + 10 % PuC, 2: 70 % ThC + 30 % PuC and 3: 50 % ThC + 50 % PuC. The temporal variation of the criticality k and the burn-up values of the reactor have been calculated by full power operation up to 17 years. Calculated startup criticalities for these fuel modes are k,0 = 1.6403, 1.7228, 1.7662, respectively. Attainable burn up values and reactor operation times with the same fuel charge will be 94 700, 265 000, 425 000 MW.D/MT and ~ 3.5, 10, 17 years, respectively. These high burn ups would reduce fuel fabrication costs and nuclear waste mass for final disposal per unit energy drastically.