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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.
M. J. Haire, L. R. Zumwalt
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 50 | Number 2 | February 1973 | Pages 91-97
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE73-A23232
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To determine fission product-graphite sorption behavior, an experimental and analytical study was conducted to obtain a model which would predict the vapor pressures of mixtures of sorbed fission product metals as a function of temperature and composition.The graphite sorbents studied were SP-1C, a very pure natural flake graphite, and TS-688, a typical needle-coke nuclear-grade graphite. Cesium and rubidium tagged with 137Cs and 86Rb were the sorbates, and the pseudo-isopiestic method was used to determine sorbate concentrations as a function of temperature and vapor pressure. Three models were examined for their capability in predicting binary mixed sorption behavior.Experiments showed the following: (a) The vapor pressure of a species varies inversely with the fraction of total sorbate metal present at a given sorbate concentration and temperature; (b) thermodynamic and FREVAP models were the most successful in the prediction of binary sorption behavior from single component isotherm data. It is concluded that if the departure from ideal adsorption behavior is not known, either model may be used in the calculation of fission product release.
