Development of an electrolysis system for tritium enrichment in superficial water samples.
Tritium present in the environment gradually decreased in the last decades and nowadays it has reached extremely low activity concentrations. The purpose of the present work is the implementation of a tritium enrichment system in water samples using electrolytic techniques and pure nickel and iron electrodes. In the present work a mean tritium enrichment factor of 13.0 +/- 3.2 was obtained. This result should allow to reach a minimum detectable activity of tritium in water samples of about 1 tritium unit (TU) or less. The present enrichment system necessitates further adjustments and improvements, such as a cooling system in order to reduce the tritium losses due to evaporation.
Development and Performance of a Multibipolar HTO Electrolysis System
Abstract Tritium separation factors are extraordinarily important parameters in the development of efficient electrolysis systems for HTO waste volume reduction and tritium recovery purposes as well as for the reproducible analysis of tritium in low-level environmental samples. In the present work, a modular, actively cooled, continuous feed electrolysis setup has been developed. In order to provide a basis for the analysis of electrode specific tritium separation factors and to investigate the system performance, electrolysis of tritiated water was conducted with constant current density in strongly alkaline medium (1 M sodium hydroxide) using platinum as reference electrode material. Furthermore, the energy saving potential of an increase of the number of cell compartments was investigated.
The Invention of the Jewish People
'All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official and popular culture, and yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive and influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century AD, and the assertion of both cultural and racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine and the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. In this bold and ambitious new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times - when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. Sand forensically dissects the official story - and demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth and the collective mystification that this requires. A bestseller in Israel and France, Shlomo Sand's book has sparked a widespread and lively debate. Should the Jewish people regard themselves as genetically distinct and identifiable across the millennia - or should that doctrine now be left behind and if the myth of the Jewish state is dismantled, could this open a path toward a more inclusive Israeli state, content within its borders?'