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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.
S. Balme, Y. Buravand, P. Fejoz, F. Leroux, P. Pastor, N. Ravenel, P. Spuig
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 3 | October 2009 | Pages 1273-1283
Technical Papers | Tore Supra Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9177
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tokamak Tore Supra was initially designed to operate long pulses, though the control and data acquisition systems nevertheless had to be upgraded to effectively perform these long-duration pulses. Continuous data acquisition was required for controlling the thermal phenomena, and huge amounts of data had to be handled, especially with the development of video imaging for the safety of the actively cooled vessel. A distributed architecture had to be developed so that real-time feedback could be implemented to ensure safe operation and to optimize the long-duration plasma performance. This paper briefly describes the initial control and data acquisition system and then reviews the developments and enhancements that were made to perform long pulses in Tore Supra.