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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.
Yoichi Watanabe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 118 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 178-185
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A19383
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electrical conductivities of weakly ionized nuclear plasmas were computed by numerically solving an electron Boltzmann equation. A pure 3He gas and 3He-Na gaseous mixtures were analyzed. The gases are ionized by fast ions (0.19-MeV tritons and 0.59-MeV protons), which are generated from in situ neutron-3He nuclear reactions. The results show that the electrical conductivity of the 3He-Na gaseous mixtures is higher than that of the pure helium gas because of the enhanced ionization of seeded sodium atoms by subexcitation electrons. This effect is not included in a standard Maxwellian model. An analytical formula of W values for gaseous mixtures was suggested to incorporate the effect of subexcitation electrons. The formula can be applied to analyze chemically complex systems.