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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The power of mentoring young talent
Earnestine Johnson
Even if conditions for mentoring are ideal, there is no guarantee that your employees won’t leave for other opportunities. Mentoring should be viewed as a duty and not as something that slows one’s work progress. In nuclear, we are challenged with striving continuously to become better professionals in our roles. Mentoring can accelerate that journey exponentially.
Although we will encounter employees who will not listen even in the best of mentoring moments, we cannot afford to lessen our efforts. Instead, work with those who welcome your time and your insights, because the nuclear industry can be an overwhelming realm to enter. We grow accustomed to the sheer volume of acronyms we use, the system complexities and nuances, the challenging and stringent regulatory environment, the personal challenges from fellow co-workers, and the high stakes associated with nuclear safety. Any one of these represents a challenge for even the most skilled engineers and technicians—and we sometimes take for granted this insider knowledge, forgetting that newcomers to the field do not yet have that perspective.
K.R. O'Kula, R.L. Olson, D. M. Hamby
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 659-667
Safety and Measurement (Monitoring) | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29822
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A full-scale PRA of a DOE production reactor has been completed that considers full release of tritium as part of the severe accident source term. Two classes of postulated reactor accidents, a loss-of-moderator pumping accident and a loss-of-coolant accident, are used to bound the expected dose consequence from liquid pathway release. Population doses from the radiological release associated with the two accidents are compared for aqueous discharge and atmospheric release modes. The expectation values of the distribution of possible values for the societal effective dose equivalent to the general public, given a tritium release to the atmosphere, is 2.8 person-Sv/PBq (9.9 × 10−3 person-rem/Ci). The general public drinking water dose to downstream water consumers is 6.5 × 10−2 person-Sv/PBq (2.4 × 10−4 person-rem/Ci) for aqueous releases to the surface streams eventually reaching the Savannah River. Negligible doses are calculated for freshwater fish and saltwater invertebrate consumption, irrigation, and recreational use of the river, given that an aqueous release is assumed to occur. Relative to the balance of fission products released in a hypothetical severe accident, the tritium-related dose is small. This study suggests that application of regional models (1610 km radius) will indicate larger dose consequences from short-term tritium releases to the atmosphere than from comparable tritium source terms to water pathways. However, the water pathways assessment is clearly site-specific, and the overall aqueous dose will be dependent on downstream receptor populations and uses of the river.