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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.
A. Abou-Sena, A. Ying, M. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 1 | July 2003 | Pages 79-84
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - MFE Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Beryllium, in its pebble form, has been proposed in various blanket concepts to serve different purposes. Thermal property data for such a heterogeneous packed bed is needed, particularly data on the impact of compression forces on its magnitude and consequent temperature profile. The objectives of this work are to obtain and quantify experimental data on the effective thermal conductivity of a Be-He packed bed, on the interface heat conductance between Be and SiC, and on the effects of externally applied pressure on these effective thermal properties. The effective thermal conductivity of a Be-He pebble bed increases as the bed mean temperature increases. The values of effective thermal conductivity vary from 2.15 to 3.00 W/m.K for bed mean temperature ranges from 90 to 420 °C. Similar temperature effects are seen in the Be/SiC interface heat conductance, as the values of interface heat conductance range from 1140 to 2200 W/m2.K. In addition, effective thermal conductivity increases remarkably with the increase of applied pressure (by a factor of 2.53 at 2 MPa), while it remains higher than the initial value by ~0.3 W/m.K when external pressure is released (hysteresis effect).