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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.
V. Romanello et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 262-267
Fusion-Fission Hybrids and Transmutation | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13430
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performances of three different types of innovative transmutation systems have been investigated in order to assess in a comparative way their potential to manage nuclear waste arising in a geographical region, where different countries have different policies with respect to nuclear energy development, but share the objective of a common optimized waste management strategy in order to minimize the waste masses sent to a geological repository. The three systems are 1) a critical low conversion ratio fast reactor (LCFR); 2) an accelerator driven system (ADS) and 3) a hybrid fission-fusion system (FFH). In order to simplify the comparison, the three systems have been loaded with comparable fuels, in particular with the same Pu to Minor Actinides (MA) ratio. A waste management scenario study has been performed: the results show that, apart from the technological readiness of each single option, the performances, in terms e.g. of time needed to eliminate specific spent fuel inventories or in terms of reduction of decay heat and radiotoxicity in a deep geological repository, are rather comparable.