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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.”
C.P.C. Wong, L. Barlcon, M. Corradini, P. Fogarty, N. Ghoniem, S. Majumdar, S. Malang, R. Mattas, K. McCarthy, B. Merrill, J. Murphy, B. Nelson, R. Nygren, M. Sawan, S. Sharafat, I. Sviatoslavsky, S. Zinkle
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 815-822
Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper reports the results of the second phase evaluation of the EVOLVE W-alloy first wall and blanket design cooled by vaporizing lithium. For the transpiration-cooled first wall and blanket concept, we identify the need to further quantify the data of lithium superheat from W-alloy heated surface and bulk lithium slabs. For the boiling lithium blanket, we identify the need to elucidate the impacts of magnetic field on various stable-boiling regimes. We also find that this FW/blanket concept should have no problem in achieving adequate nuclear performance. With the addition of passive cooling loops, the concept has a strong possibility of achieving the safety requirement of not needing a public evacuation plan under the loss of power accident conditions. Even though the irradiated W-alloy may be subject to embrittlement, due to the relatively low system pressure of the design, it is shown to be able to withstand a large number of cracks. The fundamental issues of W-alloy properties under high neutron fluence irradiation and the components fabrication technique remain. Preliminary investigations of W-alloy fabrication and heat flux removal through SBIR programs have begun and the initial results arc encouraging. We recommend that the investigation of critical issues of the EVOLVE concept continue since this innovative design has a good possibility of showing a way to achieve high performance and passively safe designs that are necessary for the utilization of fusion power.