Water transport from the North-east Irish Sea to western Scottish coastal waters: Further observations from time-trend matching of Sellafield radiocaesium

Radiocaesium isotopes, discharged into the North-east Irish Sea from the Sellafield (formerly Windscale) nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Cumbria, have been employed as flow monitors to update and extend the record of coastal water movement from the Irish Sea to the Clyde Sea area and, further north, to Loch Etive. The temporal trends in radiocaesium levels have been used to determine the extent of water mixing en route and to define mean advection rates. Flow conditions from the Irish Sea have changed considerably since the mid-1970s, the residence time of northern Irish Sea waters being ～12 months during 1978–1980 inclusive. Average transport times of four and six months are estimated for the Sellafield to Clyde and Sellafield to Etive transects respectively. Sellafield ¹³⁷Cs levels in seawater were diluted by factors of 27 and 50 respectively during current movement to the Clyde and Etive areas. The decrease in salinity-corrected ¹³⁷Cs concentrations between the Clyde and Etive suggests that dilution by Atlantic water occurs, the latter mainly entering the Firth of Lorne from the west. The majority (～94%) of the radiocaesium supply to Loch Etive enters the Firth of Lorne via the portion of the coastal current circulating west of Islay, only ～6% arriving via the Sound of Jura.     

弱磁场及甚强磁场下奇异夸克物质Urca过程的中微子能量损失率

研究了磁场对奇异星模型中夸克直接Urca过程的中微子能量损失率的影响,首先改进了弱场条件下的近似计算方法,这一方法可以推广到其他弱作用过程．在甚强磁场下,严格地计算Urca过程的中微子能量损失率,结果显示辐射率强烈地依赖于磁场,与磁场的二次方成正比,更重要的是对温度的依赖关系不同于弱场及没有磁场时的情形．     

An iterative method for simultaneously computing the synthesis of light and heavy elements

We propose an iterative algorithm for computing the synthesis of heavy elements through the rapid capture of neutrons (r-process) and, at sufficiently high temperatures, protons by simultaneously using two distinct computer codes. One of the codes describes the kinetics of nuclear reactions between light and intermediate chemical elements, which are the source of free neutrons and protons used by the second code to synthesize heavy elements from seed nuclides (isotopes near the iron peak of the cosmic abundance curve). The two codes interact through the neutron and proton reaction channels. We demonstrate the efficiency of our method with an example of the nucleosynthesis in a supernova’s helium shell triggered by the evaporation of neutrons and protons from α particles exposed to the neutrino flux from a collapsing stellar core. In this case, three or four iterations are enough to obtain an almost exact self-consistent solution.     

LANDSCAPE PERMANENCE AND NUCLEAR WARNINGS

ABSTRACT. From the perspective of a human lifetime, the hazards of some nuclear wastes are permanent, so the warnings we place at contaminated nuclear sites must be permanent too. I address questions of how best to provide one hundred centuries of public warning at the first facility for permanent disposal, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Scenarios of intrusion developed to guide the design of warning markers predicted that most of the changes in the area will be social and cultural. Because blatant and permanent markers will increase, not reduce, the probability of inadvertent intrusion, the most appropriate warning is a “landscape of illusion.” Such a landscape needs not permanent surface markers but underground warning devices beneath a soft surface marker. No warning can guarantee deterrence for 10,000 years, however.     

世界核电工业发展与地理格局的初探

核电工业自本世纪50年代以来发展迅速,其发电量不断上升,且有与火电、水电并行发展的趋势。本文在论述世界核电工业发展的基本情况后,以核电大国法国为典型代表,分析了核电工业的地位和地域分布特点,初浅地总结了核电工业的地理空间格局。     

Titles Of Theses

This essay questions the effectiveness of nuclear winter modeling as a means of impacting nuclear policy and changing public attitudes about nuclear issues. In nuclear winter modeling, humanistic concern over the possibility of global environmental destruction is cloaked in the ostensibly neutral language of science. Nuclear winter modeling attempts to apply rational argument to an issue that is rooted instead in human affect and morality. The implications of this misappropriation are discussed in terms of the dehumanizing nature of the images conjured up by nuclear winter, its attention to the effects of nuclear weapons rather than deeper structural problems, and its political ambiguity as a function of unresolvable uncertainty in model results.