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DOE nuclear cleanup costs, schedule delays continue to rise, GAO says
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management faces significant cost increases, schedule delays, and data management issues in completing nuclear waste cleanup projects, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
J. Chao, B. B. Miki, N. E. Todreas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | September 1979 | Pages 113-120
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32302
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effects on heating and tritium breeding of using different coolants and structural arrangements have been investigated for tokamak fusion reactors. Coolants considered are lithium, helium, and flibe (a molten salt, LiF-BeF2 eutectic). Structural arrangements are modeled by using four 20-cm breeding zones between a 0.5-cm-thick first wall and a 10-cm graphite reflector. Different values for the volume percent of Type 316 stainless steel are assigned in four breeding zones to represent a nonuniformly distributed structural material that satisfies various thermal-hydraulic requirements. For a 10% average volume percent stainless steel in the blanket filled with lithium, the difference in breeding ratio between having a uniform structural distribution and a slant distribution is 4%. The difference in breeding ratio where the value of albedo at the outer edge of the graphite zone is changed from 0.0 to 0.45 is 1%. Little difference in volumetric heat generation rates between using lithium and helium as coolants is observed. For a flibe-cooled blanket, the volumetric heat generation rate is higher near the first wall and lower near the reflector region than the lithium- and helium-cooled blankets. The effects on heat generation of different structural distributions and different albedos are insignificant. For values of volume percent of stainless steel in the breeding zone ranging from 5 to 15%, the breeding ratios range from 1.481 to 1.256 for lithium, 1.372 to 1.184 for helium, and 1.349 to 1.191 for flibe.