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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.
Benjamin Rouben, Eleodor Nichita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 10 | October 2021 | Pages 1633-1638
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1827884
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Throughout the years, various reports and training manuals on CANada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors have mentioned that the CANDU lattice is overmoderated. Overmoderation is not always defined in such documents but often appears associated with the positive void reactivity of the CANDU lattice. Some documents refer, logically, to overmoderation as meaning that the lattice pitch is larger than the pitch that maximizes the infinite-lattice multiplication constant but do not demonstrate this is the case for CANDU. We demonstrate that in fact, the CANDU lattice is undermoderated; that is, the current 28.575-cm lattice pitch is smaller than the pitch for which the infinite-lattice multiplication constant reaches its maximum. We hypothesize that the misconception of CANDU overmoderation may have originated from attributing the CANDU positive void reactivity to too much moderator by incorrectly equating the effect of losing heavy water coolant with the effect of losing heavy water moderator.