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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.”
Robert M. Zubrin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 1 | January 1986 | Pages 97-100
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24705
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possibility of using small initial charges of tritium and 3He to boost a deuterium field-reversed configuration (FRC) up to temperatures at which deuterium-deuterium (D-D) ignition can take place is examined. A computer program is used to track the rates of production, reaction, and leakage of the FRC plasma's isotopic constituents as the burn progresses and the FRC's temperature, density, and volume vary. On the basis of these studies and current scaling laws, a highly attractive advanced fuel FRC reactor is outlined. It is cylindrical, 12 m long, and 3.2 m in coil outer radius, and produces 1568 MW(electric), giving it an effective core power/volume ratio as great as a pressurized water reactor. No lithium blanket is required, as the tritium needed for startup can be bred by the D-D reactions themselves.