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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.
W. C. Yee, W. Davis, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 24 | Number 1 | January 1966 | Pages 1-5
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A18118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Prolonged exposure of the hydrogen form of a cation-exchange resin—a sulfonated copolymer of polystyrene crosslinked with divinylbenzene—to gamma radiation and flowing water caused more drastic changes in the chemical and physical properties of the material than has been reported by other investigators for resin exposed to like dosage in a static system. After a dose of 0.75 × 109 rads in a dynamic system, the rate of loss of strong-acid capacity was 20 to 25%/(W-h g) of dry resin, compared with the 4% and the 10 to 20% found by others for the static system. Also, de-crosslinking of more than 4% of the resin matrix accompanied this loss of capacity, compared with the more moderate de-crosslinking or even additional crosslinking reported for the static system. Gamma radiation also caused gas evolution, bead swelling, and produced a weak-acid capacity in the resin equivalent to 3 to 5% of the original strong-acid capacity. Decomposition products included soluble sulfuric, sulfonic, and oxalic acids and insoluble bits of resin. The average rate of loss of sulfur during exposure was estimated to represent 1.0 to 1.2 atoms lost per 100 eV of energy absorbed.