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Developing a new regulatory framework for advanced reactors: Update on Part 53
White
The American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) on March 29 held another presentation in its monthly Community of Practice (CoP) series. The presenter, Patrick White with the Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA), talked about the current status of efforts to develop a new regulatory framework for advanced reactors—known as 10 CFR Part 53 or simply Part 53. White serves as the research director of the NIA, where he leads their research as well as analysis-based stakeholder and policymaker engagement and education. White’s March 29 presentation is publicly available on YouTube and at ANS’s publication platform Nuclear Science and Technology Open Research (NSTOR).
RP3C chair N. Prasad Kadambi opened the CoP with brief introductory remarks about the RP3C before he welcomed White as the session’s presenter.
White covered three main topics: the history of the existing regulatory frameworks for new reactors, progress to date on the development of the Part 53 rule for advanced reactors, and the current status and next steps for the Part 53 rulemaking process.
Youji Someya, Kenji Tobita, Hiroyasu Utoh, Nobuyuki Asakura, Yoshiteru Sakamoto, Kazuo Hoshino, Makoto Nakamura, Shinsuke Tokunaga
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 423-427
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-101
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have considered a strategy for reducing the radioactive waste generated by the replacement of in-vessel components, such as blanket segments and divertor cassettes, for the fusion DEMO reactor. In the basic case, the main parameters of the DEMO reactor are a major radius of 8.2 m and a fusion power of 1.35 GW. Blanket segments and divertor cassettes should be replaced independently, as their lifetimes differ. A blanket segment comprises several blanket modules mounted to a back-plate. The total weight of an in-vessel component is estimated to be about 6,648 ton (1,575, 3,777, 372, and 924 ton of blanket module, back-plate, conducting shell, and divertor cassette, respectively). The lifetimes of a blanket segment and a divertor cassette are assumed to be 2.2 years and 0.6 years, respectively, and 52,487 tons of waste is generated over a plant life of 20 years. Therefore, there is a concern that the contamination-control area for radioactive waste may need to increase due to the amount of waste generated from every replacement. This paper proposes a management scenario to reduce radioactive waste. When feasible and relevant, back-plates of blanket segment and divertor cassette bodies (628 ton) should be reused. Using the three-dimensional neutron transportation code MCNP, the displacement per atom (DPA) of the SUS316LN back-plates is 0.2 DPA/year and that of the F82H cassette bodies is 0.6 DPA/year. Therefore, the reuse of back-plates and cassette bodies would be possible if re-welding points are arranged under neutron shielding. We found that radioactive waste could be reduced to 20 % when tritium breeding materials are recycled. Finally, we propose a design for the DEMO building that uses a hot cell and temporary storage.