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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.
T. F. Wimett
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 110 | Number 3 | March 1992 | Pages 209-236
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE90-149
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large dynamic stresses are induced in the fuel components of fast-burst, or pulse, reactors because of rapid fission heating. These stresses increase more than linearly with burst energy yield and, at some yield, will cause fuel failure. Despite many attempts, no one has yet succeeded in predicting a fuel damage threshold with useful certainty in the reactor design stage, nor has the maximum fuel stress for a given power pulse in an operating reactor been calculated satisfactorily. Some analytic solutions for the burst dynamic behavior of typical fuel components that are consistent with available fuel displacement measurements are discussed. In particular, an analytic function is introduced for stress-vibration excitation of fuel components by the bell-shaped power pulse of a reactor burst. These solutions can be employed to determine fuel damage thresholds with useful certainty. Also, a new approach is presented for the analysis of prompt burst power transients by employing fuel displacement solutions to derive dynamic reactivity quench for use in power calculations.