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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.
Izumi Murakami, Daiji Kato, Masatoshi Kato, Hiroyuki A. Sakaue
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 3 | May 2013 | Pages 400-405
Technical Paper | Selected papers from IAEA-NFRI Technical Meeting on Data Evaluation for Atomic, Molecular and Plasma-Material Interaction Processes in Fusion, September 4-7, 2012, Daejeon, Republic of Korea | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16448
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have constructed and opened atomic and molecular (AM) numerical databases for collision processes important for fusion research. Our databases are accessible through the Internet; the data are retrievable and are displayed as a table or a graph. The databases have been used for data evaluation. Critical assessments of AM data have been carried out since 1978 for electron impact ionization and excitation cross sections, rate coefficients, and charge-transfer cross sections of atom-ion collisions, for helium, carbon, oxygen, etc. Evaluated data are fitted to analytic formulas that have physically correct asymptotic behavior. As another type of evaluation, recommended data sets were selected for electron impact excitation rate coefficients of Fe atoms and ions. Because a large amount of data exists, recommended data are not fitted to analytic formulas, but all data are available as electronic files via the Internet. In addition to AM data, physical sputtering yields and backscattering coefficients are also stored as databases, and empirical formulas have been obtained since the 1980s. All evaluated data are published as research reports of the Institute for Plasma Physics of Nagoya University and the National Institute for Fusion Science of Japan. It is important to establish a systematic way for data evaluation by international collaborations to develop an evaluated AM database required for fusion research.