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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.
Yasunori Iwai, Masayuki Uzawa, Toshihiko Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 462-465
Technical Paper | Water Processing | doi.org/10.13182/FST54-462
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several types of adsorbers have been studied as they are considered for the first stage of water detritiation systems processing more than 100kg/h of high-level tritiated water generated in a future fusion plant. Zeolite is a suitable adsorbent since it is an inorganic material having a large water capacity. Rapid dehydration characteristics as well as a large HTO/H2O separation factor is necessary for the adsorber to minimize its size. Present experiments were focused on the effect of cations on HTO / H2O separation and dehydration characteristics of Y-type zeolites. The selected cations are Na, K and Ca. The flamework SiO2/Al2O3 ratio of the zeolites is fixed to 5.0 in the present experiments. It was found that the isotope separation factors are around 1.1-1.2 under static conditions. As for dehydration, operating temperature fixes the capacity of movable water from the zeolites. The capacity at room temperature is NaY > CaY > KY. HTO dehydration characteristics depend on the accumulated purge gas amount, while the purge gas rate is less influential. Effect of temperature on HTO dehydration is also less influential especially in the early stage of dehydration. Pressure swing is an effective method for HTO dehydration.