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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.
Kenneth M. Young
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 3 | April 2010 | Pages 298-304
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9473
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A demonstration tokamak is an essential next step toward a magnetic fusion-based reactor. One based on advanced tokamak plasmas is especially appealing because of its relative compactness. However, many plasma measurements will be required to provide the necessary signals to feed to ancillary systems to protect the device and control the plasma. This technical note addresses the question of how much intrusion into the blanket system will be required to allow the measurements needed to provide the information required for plasma control. All diagnostics will require, at least, the same shielding designs as planned for ITER, while having the capability to maintain their calibration through very long pulses. Much work is required to define better the measurement needs and the quantity and quality of the measurements that will have to be made, and how they can be integrated into the other tokamak structures.