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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.
Yasunori Iwai, Katsumi Sato, Toshihiko Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 83-88
Hydrogen/Tritium Behavior | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the case of a fire accident in a fusion plant, tritiated organic substances will be produced. We have developed a Pd/ZrO2 catalyst applicable for the oxidation of tritiated organic substances. In this study, two different weight ratios of palladium, 5 and 10 g/l, were selected. The overall reaction rate constant of tritiated methane oxidation with the palladium catalysts in a flow-through system were determined as a function of space velocity from 1200 to 7000 h-1 , methane concentration in carrier from 0.004 to 100 ppm, and temperature of catalyst from 323 to 673 K. As-received catalysts showed a large overall reaction rate constant over the whole tested temperature range. However, the constants gradually decreased after a while. The considerable decrease was evaluated especially over the lower temperature range. The decrease has been explained as caused by the layers of produced water that formed on the surface of the catalyst playing the role of obstacle to reactant transport onto the noble metal deposited on the catalyst. The performance of 10 g/l catalyst was superior to that of 5 g/l over the whole tested temperature range. The overall reaction rate constant was dependent on the space velocity and independent of methane concentration in the carrier.