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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.
Yan Qizhen, Zhaochun Zhang, Guo Haibo, Wang Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 178-195
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2213811
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten/graphene composite was developed and demonstrated to have good mechanical and thermal properties. Density functional theory calculations were performed to investigate elastic constants, elastic anisotropies and isotropic elastic moduli, thermodynamic properties and minimum thermal conductivity of tungsten/graphene with and without a helium-vacancy pair, and tungsten/graphane and tungsten/ditungsten carbide (tungsten/W2C) composites. The results show that tungsten/graphene composite has more toughness when compared with pure tungsten metal. It is noticed that the minimum thermal conductivity of tungsten/graphene composite is higher, introducing a potential application in heat dissipation at high temperatures. We give an honest appraisal of the anisotropic and isotropic (polycrystalline) elastic properties of tungsten/graphene, tungsten/graphane, and tungsten/W2C carbide composites. In addition, the results show that the graphene layer is a strong trap for the He atom, while He affinity to the graphene layer is weaker to a single vacancy. The formation of the He-vacancy pair due to trapping effects near the W/graphene interface will help to reduce the concentration of impurities and defects in the tungsten matrix and maintain the inherent heat dissipation properties under irradiation.