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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.
Takeshi Muranaka, Nagayoshi Shima
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 297-300
Technical Paper | Environment and Safety | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1817
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An electrolytic cell, essentially composed of a solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) film and porous dimensionally stable electrodes (DSEs), was designed to reduce the electrolytic voltage in an electrolyzer. The device achieved a tritium recovery factor of 0.836±0.021 for a volume reduction factor of five when operated at a current of 6 A, while maintaining a water bath temperature below 2 °C. Sample and standard waters were simultaneously enriched by connecting two electrolytic cells in series. The sample water was first enriched using a commercially available apparatus with a large electrolytic current of 50 A until the volume in the sample water was reduced to approximately one fifth of the original volume. This "two-stage electrolysis" enrichment was applied to coastal seawaters from the Aomori prefecture. Tritium concentrations, ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 Bq/L, were found, with a measurement error (i.e. a statistical error of one sigma) of ca. 10% of the obtained values.