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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.”
Friedrich Arendt, Peter Komarek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 1 | Number 4 | October 1981 | Pages 552-569
Technical Paper | Magnet System | doi.org/10.13182/FST81-A19948
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the major components in a fusion reactor for which a safety analysis must be carried out is the magnet system. We attempt to provide a systematic answer to the hazard potential of superconducting magnets for fusion. Event trees are developed, demonstrating the predictable behavior in all cases. It can be seen that usual failure events cause only a temporary shutdown of the magnet system without damage. Less likely accidental events will lead to single-current arcs with moderate internal damage of a single coil. Only sudden complete rupture of a turn can be followed by a multiple-current arcing resulting in a very high power arc with a certain probability of burning through the coil case, thus damaging other reactor components before extinction. Missile generation of winding parts can only occur in the very hypothetical case of simultaneous rupture of the winding at a sufficiently large distance apart. Even then, the developed kinetic energy will be less than that of airplane crashes considered in the safety analysis of nuclear power plants.