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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.
J. R. Hofmann
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 68 | Number 1 | October 1978 | Pages 73-90
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27272
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A model has been developed to describe the transient pressure field within the interconnected porosity of solid mixed-oxide fast reactor fuel during a reactor transient. The pore gas may be composed of up to two distinct chemical species, so that gas released from fuel grains may differ chemically from the fill gas originally present within the porosity of the fuel. The volume expansion of fuel upon melting is accounted for, but mechanical deformation of the solid fuel is not modeled. Results are presented for a hypothetical unprotected transient over-power accident in a gas-cooled fast reactor with ramp rates of 0.10, 1.0, and 10.0 dollar/s. In these calculations, fuel cladding failure is computed from a linear accumulative damage law and a Larson-Miller parameter correlation.