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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.”
Terry Kammash, David L. Galbraith
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 16 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 469-473
Technical Paper | Special Section: Cold Fusion Technical Notes / Tritium System | doi.org/10.13182/FST89-A29109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two schemes have been proposed to replace the aging tritium production facilities at Savannah River, South Carolina. The reactors at that site have been operating for well over a quarter of a century, producing tritium for national defense programs. But serious questions regarding safety and other issues have arisen. The U.S. Department of Energy and the federal government have reiterated their plan to build a heavy water reactor and a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at a cost of about $7 billion as replacements for the Savannah River facility. A group of scientists from national laboratories, on the other hand, have proposed the use of a linear accelerator to accelerate protons to produce neutrons to be used to produce tritium in lithium targets. They contend that the capital cost of this accelerator tritium producer is competitive with that of the reactors, but the operating cost may be high unless it is located in a region where the cost of hydropower is low. Yet another scheme is proposed that is safe and potentially less expensive than the other two. It relies on existing or rapidly developing laser technology to drive a magnetically insulated inertial confinement fusion device, which has already produced copious amounts of neutrons that could readily be used in producing tritium.