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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.
James P. Adams, Eric S. Peterson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 102 | Number 3 | June 1993 | Pages 304-312
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A17029
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The iodine concentration in the steam generator secondary vapor must be determined in order to estimate the environmental consequences (i.e., iodine source term to the environment) due to a steam generator tube rupture (SGTR). Experimental evidence indicates that this concentration is sensitive to the liquid-phase pH. A thermodynamic-based calculational approach was used to model the pH during a design-basis SGTR. The EQUILIBRIUM code within the Facility for Analysis of Chemical Thermodynamics was assessed for calculation of pH by comparison with measured pH’s in operating pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The pH was calculated for ten generic PWR designs (one Babcock & Wilcox, three Combustion Engineering, and six Westinghouse). The calculated pH was shown to be relatively insensitive to PWR design. The pH for all designs equilibrated to a value of ∼6.5.