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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.
D. H. Zhu, J. L. Chen, Z. J. Zhou, R. Yan, R. Ding
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 2 | October 2014 | Pages 337-342
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-738
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To investigate the influences of dispersed lanthanum oxide (La2O3) additive on the properties of a tungsten (W)-based plasma-facing material, ultrafine-grained W-1% La2O3 composite has been successfully fabricated using the resistance sintering under ultrahigh pressure method, which can suppress W grain growth during sintering processes. Its relative density, Vickers microhardness, microstructure, and thermal conductivity have been analyzed and compared with those of pure W. Moreover, its behaviors under fusion-related conditions, i.e., edge plasma loading in the HT-7 tokamak and transient heat flux simulated by a high-intensity pulsed ion beam, have been evaluated. It is shown that without the fine-grain strengthening effect of dispersed particles, the La2O3 additive as second-phase particles being dispersed in W-based plasma-facing material degrades the material resistance ability under plasma heat loading.