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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.
George H. Miley, Xiaoling Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 395-400
IFE Target Design | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8933
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A radically new ICF target design is described that is designed to achieve ultra-high deuterium densities in implosions. This target is based on emerging technology for creating deuterium clusters with densities approaching 1024/cm3 at room temperature in a Pd structure. Our initial studies of such clusters have relied on stress formation of dislocation sites in Pd thin films to the number of cluster sites per unit volume remains low. Here a new method employing nano-structuring of the Pd significantly increases the site density over the target volume. This in turn suggests that a sizable region of the compressed target deuterium can reach densities an order of magnitude higher than possible with prior target designs. This can significantly increase the fusion reaction burn density, hence the target burn-up efficiency.