• Question: What has been your recent project?

    Asked by 283eneq23 to Oliver, Leah, Aleks on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Leah Morgan

      Leah Morgan answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      I’m working on a few projects at the moment and two of them are radiation shields. JET produces lots of high-energy neutrons when it’s running, and this is quite a dangerous form of radiation as it’s really difficult to stop neutrons!
      One of my shields is huge! It’s going to be 5 metres long, 10 metres in the air, and it’s going to weigh like 400kg. It’s protecting some fibre optic cables from slowly going dark when the radiation hits them. Most of my work on this has been making sure it’s not going to fall off the wall and squish someone!
      My other shield is small and weirdly shaped. JET has 6 turbopumps which are very important, if they break during an experiment the whole campaign will be over… inside the pumps are these little rubber O-rings (round seals) which would be DESTROYED by the radiation. So I’m designing some teeny, tiny, weirdly-shaped shields to protect the little O-rings. Hopefully I can save them!

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