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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.
Priyanka Brahmbhatt, Amit Sircar, Rudreksh Patel, E. RajendraKumar, Sadhana Mohan, Kalyan Bhanja
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 391-396
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1289580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Indian Lead Lithium Ceramic Breeder (LLCB) Test Blanket Module (TBM) is to be installed in one half of equatorial port #2 for testing in ITER machine. Liquid Pb-Li and solid Li2TiO3 are the tritium breeder materials in LLCB TBM. Tritium permeates through structural materials in particular at higher temperatures, which is a major operational and safety concern. Therefore, tritium flows in different locations of ITER Tokamak complex have been estimated.
Tritium transport from LLCB TBM and its ancillary systems into process rooms has been studied and analyzed in this work. A steady state diffusion limited permeation model neglecting surface effects has been used for the analysis. Tritium permeation to the Vacuum Vessel, Pipe Forest Area, Port Cell, Pipe Chase Area, Tokamak Cooling Water System Vault Annex (TCWS-VA) and Tritium Process Room in L-2 level has been estimated.
The requirement to be fulfilled in each equatorial port cell is that the tritium concentration in the port cell during maintenance operations should be below the admissible limit for human access (regulatory maximum allowable value < 1 DAC = 3.4 × 105 Bq/m3, Derived Air concentration). The presence of the Detritiation System (DS) in the Port cell has to be taken into account. This admissible limit for human access has to be reached in a sufficiently short time (target = 12 h) after plasma shutdown. Additional release during maintenance and radiological zoning with recommended <10 μSv/h need to be considered. Management of concentration of permeated tritium in different locations considering above requirement has also been discussed in this paper.