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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.
Kozo Katsuyama, Koji Maeda, Tsuyoshi Nagamine, Hirotaka Furuya
Nuclear Technology | Volume 169 | Number 1 | January 2010 | Pages 73-80
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9344
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional X-ray computer tomography (CT) images were successfully taken of a fast breeder reactor fuel assembly that had been irradiated to high burnup. The interior and outside of the fuel assembly can be clearly observed on any cross section from any angle. These images make it possible to analyze deformations and microstructural changes in the fuel pins and abnormalities in the fuel assembly. An analysis was made for 127 central voids, i.e., one in each fuel pin of the traverse cross section, and the void sizes were tentatively related to the linear heat rating. Compared with conventional nondestructive and destructive postirradiation examinations (PIEs), this X-ray CT technique has great advantages including acquiring large numbers of PIE data in a short time, reducing PIE costs, reducing the amounts of radioactive waste generation, and physically protecting nuclear materials.