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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.
S. R. Klein, E. J. Gamboa, C. M. Huntington, C. C. Kuranz, P. Susalla, S. Chadwick, B. Lairson, D. E. Hoover, F. Elsner, G. Malamud, C. Di Stefano, R. S. Gillespie, R. P. Drake
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 305-312
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16355
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The University of Michigan has been fabricating targets for OMEGA campaigns since 2003. These experiments explore supernova-relevant high-energy-density physics. The complexity of recent target designs has made it necessary to explore new methods of producing components that satisfy experimental needs. Interest in the dynamics of nonaxisymmetric shocks has led to the development of polyimide tubes with noncircular cross sections. For our latest Thomson scattering target, shielding was a very important component to the target design. We employed techniques to bend gold foils, enabling complex geometries without any of the seams inherent when two separate foils are pieced together. Machined acrylic bases are used to support all the components on our targets, contributing further to their repeatability and providing us with a method that eases our build. Here, we present improvements in our techniques, along with our basic tried-and-true methods of producing repeatable targets.