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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.”
John M. Scott, Per F. Peterson, Alan Burnham
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 459-463
Plasma Facing Components Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963655
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first wall of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber will be a source of contamination for the final optics assemblies (FOA) debris shields. The expected x-ray fluence on NIF can be as high as 2 J/cm2 for 20 MJ target yields. This is sufficiently intense to mobilize first wall material and contaminants that have been deposited on the first wall. Since 90% of the aluminum target chamber surface area will consist of first wall panels, it is critical to choose a material that is not easily mobilized by target x-ray emissions. Additionally, it would be advantageous to have a first wall design that provides a sink for mobilized material in the target chamber. With these issues at hand, a louver design has been proposed as the configuration of the NIF first wall. Experiments simulating the proposed louver geometry were fielded on Nova at x-ray fluence levels comparable to those expected on NIF. The results of these experiments were applied to the understanding of NIF contamination issues and used as a benchmark for the TSUNAMI code. Numerical studies were performed to measure the collection efficiency of the louver design where several parameters including louver length, distance between louvers, and x-ray fluence were varied.