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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.”
A. Kumar, M.A. Abdou, Y. Ikeda, T. Nakamura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1909-1918
Neutronic | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29621
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The selection of materials and design options for fusion device components depends crucially on the level of radioactivity and decayheat induced in the components subject to D-T neutron irradiation. An experimental program was carried out to obtain decay γ emission spectra from samples of Fe, Ni, Cr, MnCu alloy, Ti, Mo, Zr, Ta, W, Si, Mg, Al, V, Nb, SS316, YBa2Cu3O7 and ErBa2Cu3O7, which were subjected to simulated fusion neutron environment. Cooling times obtained ranged from 10 min to 7 days. The experimental results have been analyzed using four leading radioactivity codes: DKRICF, REAC, RACC and THIDA. The integrated decay γ emission rates (over 100 KeV to 3 MeV) have been compared in addition to decay γ emission spectra. It is observed that : (i) generally, much better agreement is found between computed (C) and experimentally measured (E) values for integrated γ emission rates as against the detailed γ spectra, (ii) C/E ratios for integrated γ emission rates are found to range from 0.001 to 300, though most of the ratios cluster between 1 to 2. Significant discrepancies are obtained on C/E ratios for a number of cases for the four codes used above. Most of the observed discrepancies are due to (a) missing or wrong fundamental decay γ-ray data, e.g., (1) missing decay data in DKRICF for 186Ta, 187W, 181W, 90mY, 86Rb, 88Y, etc., (2) wrong decay γ-intensities for W products in THIDA, (b) inaccurate activation cross sections, e.g., for V, Zr, Mo in DKRICF, RACC, REAC, (c) errors on computed neutron energy spectra, (d) various experiment related factors, essentially poor counting statistics for weak neutron induced reactions.