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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.”
D. J. Alexander, J. C. Cooley, B. J. Cameron, L. B. Dauelsberg, R. M. Dickerson, R. E. Hackenberg, M. E. Mauro, A. Nobile, Jr., P. A. Papin, G. Rivera
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 796-801
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1203
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Work is underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory to fabricate machined-and-bonded target capsules of Be-6 wt% Cu for the National Ignition Facility. Significant progress has been made in producing material with the desired composition, purity, and homogeneity of composition, by arc melting. This material is thermomechanically processed by equal channel angular extrusion, to break down the coarse ascast structure and refine the grain size, to about 20 m. Machining with diamond tooling results in a significant improvement of the as-machined roughness, that also results in improved bond strengths. Bonding with a sputtered layer of Al can achieve high strengths with a bond 1.2 m thick, and thinner bonds are being investigated. Laser-drilled holes and fill-tube counterbores produced by electrodischarge machining appear to be feasible, but will require improvements in specimen positioning.