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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.
Akmali Masood, Robert Plana
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 4 | April 2026 | Pages 932-942
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2502889
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study presents a comprehensive reliability assessment of passive nuclear cooling systems exposed to corrosion in stratified high-temperature water environments. A surface chemistry–based corrosion model is developed, grounded in the Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction mechanism, incorporating temperature-dependent adsorption and oxygen concentration effects. To account for thermal stratification, a novel analytical expression integrates average temperature and gradient-driven correction terms. The corrosion model is validated against empirical data for steel in hot water, demonstrating accurate capture of experimental trends. A reliability framework is constructed using a Weibull-based probabilistic approach, linking corrosion depth to structural failure criteria. A Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis is also conducted, quantifying the impact of parameter variability on failure probabilities over time. The results reveal that early-life failure risk is pivotal in high-temperature environments, emphasizing the importance of accurate degradation modeling for long-term system integrity.