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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.
R. A. Stark, G. H. Miley
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 92 | Number 1 | January 1986 | Pages 92-97
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A17869
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A one-dimensional radial hybrid code was written to study the start-up of the field-reversed mirror via neutral beam injection. This code, named FROST (Field-Reversed One-dimensional STart- up), models the plasma as azimuthally symmetric with no axial dependence. A multigroup method in energy and canonical angular momentum describes the large orbit ions from the beam. This method is designed to be more efficient than those employing particle tracking, since the characteristic time scale of the simulation is the ion slowing down time, rather than the much shorter cyclotron period. A time-differentiated Grad-Shafranov equation couples the ion current to massless fluid equations describing electrons and low-energy ions. Flux coordinates are used in this fluid model, in preference to a Eulerian framework, so that coupling of plasma at the two different radii of a closed flux surface can be treated with ease. Since a fluid treatment for electrons is invalid near afield null, a separate model for the electron current was included for this region, which is a unique feature. Results of simulation of injection into a 2XIIB-like plasma are discussed. Electron currents are found to retard, but not prevent, reversal of the magnetic field at the plasma center.