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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.
Kazuki Kuwagaki, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 5 | May 2020 | Pages 405-413
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1706322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of this technical note is to evaluate the discharged fuel of breed-and-burn (B&B) reactors. The discharged burnup in a B&B core can be high, and there is a concern that as decay heat increases, handling after a shutdown might be difficult. Because discharged fuels contain a number of plutonium nuclides, the potential for proliferation is also a concern. Moreover, radiotoxicity levels are an issue for geological disposal. As reference cores, two stationary wave reactor (SWR) cores proposed in our previous studies were used. The SWR is a special type of B&B reactor. Discharged fuels of the two SWR cores were evaluated by comparing them to a pressurized water reactor (PWR) and a fast breeder reactor. The discharged fuels of both SWR cores were not significantly worse than the reference PWR, even though the burnup was about 2.6 to 7.0 times higher.