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Latest News
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.”
Yoshi Hirooka, Robert W. Conn, Monali J. Khandagle, Gaetan Chevalier, Toshiaki Sogabe, Teruo Matsuda, Hiroaki Ogura, Hirotaka Toyoda, Hideo Sugai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 4 | July 1991 | Pages 2059-2069
Technical Paper | Carbon Material Special | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Newly developed bulk-boronized graphites and boronized carbon-carbon composites, with a total boron concentration ranging from 3 to 30 wt%, have been bombarded with steady-state deuterium plasmas at temperatures between 200 and 1600°C in the PISCES-B facility. The erosion yield of bulk-boronized graphite is smaller than that of pyrolytic graphite by a factor of 2 to 3 in regimes of chemical sputtering, physical sputtering, and radiation-enhanced sublimation (RES). Plasma bombardment at elevated temperatures does not noticeably alter the near-surface composition of bulk-boronized graphite. A chemical pinning effect of boron on the migration of interstitial carbon atoms is the key to the reduction of erosion due to RES. Post-bombardment thermal desorption spectroscopy indicates that bulk boronization enhances recombinative desorption of deuterium. The enhanced deuterium desorption is responsible for the suppressed chemical sputtering. Deuterium retention in bulk-boronized graphite at temperatures from room temperature to 800°C has been measured, and it is maximized at temperatures around 300°C. The maximized deuterium retention increases by a factor of 2 as the boron concentration changes from 0 to 90%.