Quote:
Originally Posted by IROC
And...you're right on the "cleanliness". My area of expertise is remote handling. ITER components are going to be highly activated.
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I am not a nuclear engineer but I understand that some more clever thought is now going into even "boring" fission systems with the wastestream in mind. Evidently some of the choices we made way-back-when regarding cladding and other associated-but-not-uranium things brew up into some difficult radionuclides (or however you spell it) after a long bath in neutrons. Now if only we could get reprocessing!
Heck, my little NDT group runs a few 15 MeV x-ray systems and even after an hour or two computed tomography run (3600 or so pictures) sometimes you have to make sure that the customer understands that what they're getting out isn't always the same as what went in. They might just have to cool their jets while their trinket "cools" off.
Anyway, I hope they get the thing going and that they get a good source of tritium. Some interesting related stories can be found from the "kaboom" side of things...