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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.
Franck Bernard, Sébastien Bonthoux, Marc Forestier, Antonio Sargeni, Julien Taforeau
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 1 | March 2026 | Pages S693-S706
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2530299
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In recent years, the French Technical Safety Organization (IRSN) has developed a new project to simulate accurately the interaction between neutronics and thermal-hydraulic phenomena. This project, called the Advanced Neutronics and Thermal-hydraulic for the Analysis of the Reactor Safety (ANTARES), couples the thermal-hydraulic code CATHARE-3 with the three-dimensional neutronics nodal code PARCS. Following the recent reorganization of nuclear safety in France, this project is now led by French Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ASNR). The aim is to provide ASNR with a multiphysics computing tool for carrying out safety analyses primarily for pressurized water reactors. To increase the reliability of ANTARES, IRSN has decided to participate in the TVA Watts Bar Unit 1 Multi-Physics Multi-Cycle Depletion benchmark proposed and supported within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency Working Party on Scientific Issues of Reactor Systems working group. After a brief description of the ANTARES computational chain, this paper presents our first results, which demonstrate a good agreement between ANTARES and the proposed reference solutions by the benchmark team.