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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.
H. Ishikawa et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 127-130
Technical Paper | Blanket Design | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1779
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Tritium release from thermal neutron-irradiated Li4SiO4 is initiated with the annihilation of E'-centers by recovering O- with diffusion of O-. Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) shows that differences in the formation of irradiation damage between 14 MeV and thermal neutrons in Li4SiO4 result in different tritium release behaviors. The kinetics for the annihilation of irradiation defects has been determined. The contribution of elastic collisions by 14 MeV neutrons was much higher than that of thermal neutrons. Isothermal annealing experiments show that annihilation of irradiation defects consisted of two processes: namely, the fast and slow annihilation processes. Their activation energies were determined to be 0.13 and 0.39 eV, respectively. Comparing the experimental results for the thermal and 14 MeV neutronirradiated Li4SiO4 shows that the activation energies of the slow annihilation process were significantly different. These results relate to the density of irradiation defects, which in turn depend on the contribution of the recoil particles produced by nuclear reactions to form irradiation damaged sites.