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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. Elias, F. J. Munno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 12 | Number 1 | September 1971 | Pages 46-55
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT71-A15897
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The computational system, 2DBCOST, efficiently determines optimum fast reactor fuel management strategies. 2DBCOST, including the associated optimization technique used, provides a basis on which to study the impact of variables such as fabrication, reprocessing, shipping, interest, fuel handling, material costs, inventory lead times, and post-irradiation lag times on reactor fuel costs and to subsequently determine the lowest cost operating policy. The computational system will adjust an LMFBR fuel management policy to meet changing economic or marketplace conditions. Trial use has shown that the code will rapidly determine an optimum fast-reactor blanket fuel management scheme for the cases studied. The impact of both blanket radial out-in subassembly movement and moderator seeding was investigated. Cost penalties associated with moving six sub-assemblies per cycle less than the optimum will approach three million dollars over a 10-year period; similar savings are demonstrated with respect to moderator seeding. The objective function is shown to be unimodal.