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GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
J. Sanz, O. Cabellos, P. Yuste, S. Reyes, J.F. Latkowski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 996-1002
Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963372
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) devices, both test/experimental facilities and fusion energy (IFE) power plants, will operate in a pulsed mode. However, the pulsing schedule in these devices is very different, and it could range from one shot every several days in an experimental facility to some Hz in IFE reactors. The main objective of the present work is to determine whether or not a continuous-pulsed (CP) approach could be an accurate and practical methodology in modeling the pulsed activation experienced by chamber materials of both types of devices. In testing the applicability of the CP irradiation model, we used materials and neutron environment scenarios of the HYLIFE-II reactor and the NIF experimental facility. It is demonstrated that a CP approach consisting of a continuous irradiation period followed by a series of only a few pulses prior to shutdown, can efficiently model the real pulsed operating regimes of the chamber materials, in terms of both accuracy and CPU time consumption. Pros and cons of the model when compared with an equivalent steady-state (ESS) method are discussed, and comparison with the exact pulsed (EP) modeling is also performed.