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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.
Tim Teichmann, Xueli Luo, Thomas Giegerich, Christian Day
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | April-May 2024 | Pages 399-410
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2229679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The requirement for a reduction of the tritium inventory of the European demonstration fusion reactor (EU-DEMO) has led to the active research and development of a continuously working pumping process termed “KALPUREX.” This process foresees the direct recycling of a large fraction of the unburnt hydrogen isotopologues via superpermeation in metal foil pumps during the burn phase. The remaining exhaust gas mixture is pumped by continuously operating, mercury-driven linear diffusion pumps. Diffusion pumps are kinetic high vacuum pumps whose pumping principle is based on the momentum transfer from a supersonic mercury vapor jet to the pumped gas mixture. Like many high vacuum pumps, they feature species-dependent pumping speeds. In the present work, we develop a simplified hybrid model of the high vacuum pumping train in order to estimate the effective pumping speed of the integrated system. The results of this model and its implications on the further development of the vacuum system are discussed for the burn and dwell phases of EU-DEMO.