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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.”
James K. Garner, Mohamed A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 837-847
Liquid-Metal Blankets and Magnetohydrodynamic Effects | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24842
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The work reported here attempts to: 1) define limits for the design windows for liquid metal breeders and coolants with various structural materials in various tokamak fusion reactors, and 2) quantify the impact of uncertainties in these limits on the design window. MHD pressure drop and heat transfer models are developed and used to quantify the effects of varying several tokamak reactor and blanket design parameters and materials properties. Uncertainties in the present pressure drop equations and calculational methods are also considered. Calculations are used to evaluate the impact of the coolant inlet temperature on the thermal cycle efficiency. An evaluation of the limits of uncertainty gives results ranging from a promising blanket candidate to a severely restricted design window, that would probably exclude self-cooled liquid metal blankets for large tokamaks from consideration. The major uncertainties in the design window result from the current lack of understanding of pressure drop and heat transfer in strong magnetic fields.