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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.”
George Tsotridis
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 198-208
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A64
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma-facing components in tokamak-type fusion reactors are subjected to intense heat loads during plasma disruptions, causing melting and evaporation of the metallic surface layer. Simultaneously, large eddy currents are induced in the plasma-facing components, which interact with the large background magnetic field, hence producing substantial electromagnetic loads that have a strong influence on component integrity and lifetime. The depths and shapes of the molten layers of pure tungsten metal, which are produced when a high heat load strikes the surface of the material during a plasma disruption under the simultaneous influence of external body forces arising from electromagnetic fields, were studied by using a two-dimensional transient computer program that solves the equations of continuity, momentum, and energy, with monotonically varying external body forces. It is demonstrated that external body forces, having an outward direction from the plane of the test piece and with different gradients with respect to the radial direction, influence the shapes and depths of molten layers to a significant extent. Results are presented for a range of energy densities, disruption times, and gradients of linearly varying external body forces.