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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.”
Lee C. Cadwallader, Cory S. Miller, Kathryn A. McCarthy
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 599-603
Safety and Environment (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper discusses the possible forms of injury to maintenance personnel that could arise from a cryostat air ingress event. The results of a thermal-hydraulic analysis of several cryostat breach sizes show the time scales for possible injury and the severity of air pressure transients in the rooms near the cryostat. Energy sources were reviewed to identify worker safety concerns in a cryostat vacuum breach event. The room air pressure drop in medium and large breaches is the most important worker safety concern. Standard vacuum safety techniques are reducing time in proximity, maintaining an exclusion area, and employing some form of barrier or shielding between workers and vacuum reservoirs. Other suggested safety techniques discussed here are engineering controls (doors that can be easily opened under differential pressure), and administrative controls (buddy system, evacuation plan). These techniques are easy to implement in early design stages.