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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.”
Thomas J. Kissner, Ronald E. Wieneke
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 583-587
Safety; Measurement and Accountability; Operation and Maintenance; Application | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29810
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tritium Emissions Reduction Facility (TERF) is an automated process that continuously removes tritium from process gases before they are discharged to the atmosphere. Key control parameters include: temperature, pressure, flow, oxygen content, total combustibles, moisture concentrations and tritium concentrations. The procurement of an industrial, microprocessor-based Distributed Process Control System was justified for TERF due to the critical nature and complexity of the system. A detailed performance specification was prepared and submitted to industrial companies who had demonstrated past success in the field of process control and instrumentation. The contract was awarded to the Foxboro Company, of Foxboro, Ma., who developed the new Intelligent Automation (I/A) Distributed Process Control System. A primary goal of the design team was that the control system increase TERF reliability and availability by automatically controlling system operation and by assisting the operator in the diagnosis of problems, preventative maintenance, alarming, report generation, and long term storage of data. The comprehensive continuous monitoring of the TERF process provided by the Foxboro I/A Distributed System is expected to: (1) optimize the system operating parameters and control the process better than was previously possible, (2) provide more alerts and alarms to aid operators in diagnosing and responding to problems, and (3) record and organize process data more effectively than before.