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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Shanqi Chen, Daochuan Ge, Zhen Wang, Jiangtao Jia, Zhibin Chen, Liqin Hu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 74 | Number 3 | October 2018 | Pages 238-245
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1461966
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
No-public evacuation is an expectation for fusion power plants (FPPs) from the public and governments. In this technical note, a preliminary consequence assessment of an ITER wet bypass–like accident (the accident with the most severe consequence in ITER) of a helium-cooled deuterium-tritium tokamak FPP is performed and compared with that of ITER. Ideal gas–based methodology is proposed to evaluate the released materials in accidents, which is verified by typical accident cases in FPPs. The verification indicates that, compared with the best estimated codes, the proposed method is much simpler and easier with effectiveness. The accident assessment shows that this helium-cooled FPP design may still need public evacuation if the accident happens, which demonstrates the requirement of further investigations for FPP accidents. Some suggestions are proposed to improve the safety of FPPs based on the assessment.