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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.
B. J. Merrill, L. A. El-Guebaly, C. Martin, R. L. Moore, A. R. Raffray, D. A. Petti, ARIES-CS Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 3 | October 2008 | Pages 838-863
Technical Paper | Aries-Cs Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-5
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ARIES-CS is a 1000 MW(electric) compact stellarator conceptual fusion power plant design. This power plant design contains many innovative features to improve the physics, engineering, and safety performance of the stellarator concept. ARIES-CS utilizes a dual-cooled lead lithium blanket that employs low-activation ferritic steel as a structural material, with the first wall cooled by helium and the breeding zone self-cooled by flowing lead lithium. In this paper we examine the safety and environmental performance of ARIES-CS by reporting radiological inventories, decay heat, and radioactive waste management options and by examining the response of ARIES-CS to accident conditions. These accidents include conventional loss of coolant and loss of flow events, an ex-vessel loss of coolant event, and an in-vessel loss of coolant with bypass event that mobilizes in-vessel radioactive inventories (e.g., tritium and erosion dust from plasma-facing components). Our analyses demonstrate that the decay heat can be safely removed from ARIES-CS and the facility can meet the no-evacuation requirement.