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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.
John L. Johnson,a
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1275-1283
Alternate Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23032
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental and theoretical work on the stellarator concept has established its position as the best alternate concept for fusion power. Its plasma properties are comparable to, or better than, those obtained in comparable tokamak devices. Confinement and transport should be adequate for reactor operation, with high-β operation possible. Although the coil configurations in present experiments are complicated, stellarator reactors could be simpler than tokamaks. The possibilities of steady-state operation, little recirculating power, good start-up and control properties, no disruptions, modular construction, and a built-in divertor make it an obvious direction for tokamak evolution as well as a viable alternate concept in its own right.