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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.”
Ken-ichi Hattori, Yoichi Hirano, Yasuyuki Yagi, Toshio Shimada, Kiyoshi Hayase
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 4 | November 1995 | Pages 1619-1633
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30429
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Zero-dimensional power balance is analyzed, and an operation boundary is deduced in a “beam-assisted reversed-field pinch”; the latter utilizes partial poloidal current drive by neutral beams so that transport losses arising from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)-dynamo, i.e., tearing mode instability are reduced. Changes of power flow and heat conductivity due to a beam driven current are treated by considering an MHD-dynamo-based power balance model that assumes linear dependence of magnetic fluctuation level on the externally driven current. It is shown that a ratio of a beam driven current to a dynamo current must not exceed ∼40% regarding a beta-limit in the next generation of plasma experiments (minor radius/major radius = 0.6m/1.8 m, plasma current = 1 MA, poloidal beta = 0.1). At that point, the energy confinement time is predicted to increase by a multiple or so of that estimated from the MHD dynamo model without a current drive.