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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.”
R.M. Brown, G.L. Ogram, F.S. Spencer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 1165-1169
Tritium Release Experiment | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25296
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A release of 3.54 TBq of HT was conducted over an experimental field at Chalk River consisting of a 200 m diameter grassland and a further 200 m stretch of coarse sand having sparse vegetation. Tritiated hydrogen was released at a steady rate over a 30 minute period. Atmospheric sampling for HTO and HT was done using molecular sieve and Pd-loaded molecular sieve traps. HTO/HT ratios observed during the release ranged from 1.37×10−5 at 5 m to 7.0×10−4 at 400 m distance from the release point indicating an effective oxidation rate of about 1.5%/h, confirming results obtained in a preliminary experiment in 1986. Oxidation truly in the atmosphere must be much slower than this effective rate since HTO observed in the plume could be attributed primarily to evaporation of tritium oxidized in the surface soil of the field. The distribution of HT in the plume was similar in trend to that calculated from the Gaussian Plume Model but observed concentrations were about one half of the calculated values.