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Fusion Science and Technology
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.”
Shigeo Numata, Yasuhiko Fujii, Makoto Okamoto
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 466-472
Technical Paper | Safety Environmental Aspect | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29387
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Cleanup of tritiated water in typical reactor-size concrete enclosures is simulated taking into account the soaking of the tritiated water into the concrete. For an enclosure made of concrete with ordinary porosity, the “soaking effect” has little effect on the cleanup time for releases with tritium concentrations of <1 × 108 Bq/m3. If the concrete porosity is reduced to 0.03, the soaking effect has little effect on the cleanup time for a tritium concentration of up to 1 × 109 Bq/m3. An optimum flow rate of between 1 × 104 and 1.5 × 104 m3/h for the tritium removal system minimizes the costs of removal system equipment and facility downtime for releases with a concentration >5 × 108 Bq/m3 in a typical reactor-size enclosure. Estimated total costs to complete the cleanup within 48 and 72 h with these flow rates are within 1.3 times of the minimum total costs. The estimated total costs for a cleanup time of 48 h are comparable to those for a cleanup time of 72 h.