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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.
A. Widdowson et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 51-54
Technical Paper | Iter and Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1763
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The retention of tritium (T) by carbon based deposits on tokamak surfaces is of increasing concern to the fusion community as the scale of tritium retention by this mechanism could be a limiting factor for the operation of fusion reactors, such as ITER. Hence there is a need to investigate ways of mitigating T retention and also for detritiating surfaces by either desorption of T or removal of tritiated deposits. The results of the removal of codeposits from CFC tiles by pulsed laser ablation are reported here. The results show that it is possible to completely remove a 300m thick hydrogen isotope rich carbon film at a rate of 12x10-3m2/hr by this method and that with optimisation of the laser parameters there is scope to improve the treatment rates to provide a useful tool for managing T inventory in tokamaks.