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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.”
D. J. Den Hartog, R. P. Golingo, S. L. Jackson, B. A. Nelson, U. Shumlak
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 134-137
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A624
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ZaP Flow Z-pinch plasma device at the University of Washington produces a small diameter (20-30 mm) dense Z-pinch plasma with typical electron density 1022-1023 m-3 and ion plus electron temperature 100-200 eV. The plasma is stable, with relatively low magnetic mode activity, for tens of microseconds. This is orders of magnitude longer than predicted by a simple ideal magnetohydrodynamic calculation. The probable stabilizing mechanism is radial shear in the axial plasma flow. The axially flowing Z-pinch is generated with a coaxial accelerator coupled to a pinch assembly chamber. After the pinch assembles a quiescent period occurs, during which the mode activity is significantly reduced. Multichord Doppler shift measurements of impurity lines show a large, sheared flow during the quiescent period and low, uniform flow profiles during periods of high mode activity. The plasma has a sheared axial flow that exceeds the theoretical threshold for stability during the quiescent period and is lower than the threshold during periods of high mode activity. The Z-pinch plasmas are globally stable for 700-2000 times the theoretically predicted kink growth time of a static Z-pinch. The end of the quiescent period corresponds to a decrease in acceleration of plasma and possibly suggests a means to extend the experiment to quasi-steady-state operation.