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DOE announces NEPA exclusion for advanced reactors
The Department of Energy has announced that it is establishing a categorical exclusion for the application of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) procedures to the authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors.
According to the DOE, this significant change, which goes into effect today, “is based on the experience of DOE and other federal agencies, current technologies, regulatory requirements, and accepted industry practice.”
Osamu Mitarai, Katsunori Muraoka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 36 | Number 2 | September 1999 | Pages 194-211
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A102
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The consequence of the failure effect of burn control diagnostic systems, such as neutron diagnostics, bolometers, electron cyclotron emission power loss diagnostics, interferometer, and lost alpha detector, on ignited operation has been analyzed, and the fail-safe operation in a tokamak fusion reactor including the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has been considered. Because the failure of the neutron diagnostic system for fusion power measurement leads to a fusion power surge for the simple control algorithm, the fail-safe control algorithm has been introduced to avoid this problem. As failure of the power loss measurement such as the bolometer system terminates the ignition, then it is less problematic. The effect of the interferometer fringe counting error on the ignited operation is not simple, as just mentioned, and a lost alpha detector can be removed from the feedback system using the preset value.