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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.
Shih-Hai Li, Chu-Tien Chen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 2 | November 1997 | Pages 136-148
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35422
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Analytical solutions are developed for the problem of radionuclide transport in a system of parallel fractures situated in a porous rock matrix. A kinetic solubility-limited dissolution model is used as the inlet boundary condition. The solutions consider the following processes: (a) advective transport in the fractures, (b) mechanical dispersion and molecular diffusion along the fractures, (c) molecular diffusion from a fracture to the porous matrix, (d) molecular diffusion within the porous matrix in the direction perpendicular to the fracture axis, (e) adsorption onto the fracture wall (f) adsorption within the porous matrix, and (g) radioactive decay: The solutions are based on the Laplace transform method. The general transient solution is in the form of a double integral that is evaluated using composite Gauss-Legendre quadrature. A simpler transient solution that is in the form of a single integral is also presented for the case that assumes negligible longitudinal dispersion along the fractures. The steady-state solutions are also provided. A number of examples are given to illustrate the effects of the following important parameters: (a) fracture spacings, (b) dissolution-rate constants, (c) fracture dispersion coefficient, (d) matrix retardation factor, and (e) fracture retardation factor.