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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.
D. W. Millsap, M. E. Cournoyer, S. Landsberger, J. Tesmer, Y. Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 106-112
Technical Note | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-47
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nylon 6,6 tensile specimens, conforming to the casing for self-contained fire extinguisher systems, have been irradiated using both an accelerator He++ ion beam and a 5-Ci PuBe neutron source to model the radiation damage these systems would likely incur over a lifetime of operation within glove boxes. Following irradiation, these samples were mechanically tested using standard practices as described in ASTM D638. The results of the He++ study indicate that the tensile strength of the nylon specimens undergoes some slight (<10%) degradation while other properties of the samples, such as elongation and tangent modulus, appear to fluctuate with increasing dose levels. The He++-irradiated specimens also have a noticeable level of discoloration corresponding to increasing levels of dose. The neutron-irradiated samples show a higher degree of mechanical degradation than the He++-irradiated samples.