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Latest News
Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Susana Reyes, Jeffery F. Latkowski, Lee C. Cadwallader
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 3 | May 2003 | Pages 468-472
Technical Paper | Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A292
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the past 2 yr, significant progress has been made in several areas related to the safety and environmental (S&E) aspects of inertial fusion energy (IFE). An updated methodology has been developed, and accident analyses have been performed for two IFE conceptual power plants and a target fabrication facility. Parallel to the consequence analyses of different accident scenarios, ongoing studies of accident initiating events are being used to support safety assessment and create a basic framework of types of events to consider in future risk characterization of new plant designs. Target designers/fabrication specialists have been provided with ranking information related to the S&E characteristics of candidate target materials. We have revisited waste management options for IFE, introducing the concept of clearance versus the traditional shallow land burial. A brief summary of results in each of these activities is given, and plans for future work are outlined.