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GLE gets incentives, draft EIS
The governments of Kentucky and McCracken County have granted preliminary approval to Global Laser Enrichment for a comprehensive incentive package to support the development of the North Carolina–based company’s planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility in the western part of the state. The performance-based incentive package would provide as much as $98.9 million in tax incentives and other economic incentives—provided that GLE reaches the required thresholds in investments and job creation.
In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has completed a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) in response to GLE’s application to construct and operate the PLEF. Members of the public can submit comments on the draft EIS by May 11 for consideration by the NRC.
Sandra J. Brereton et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 3 | October 2011 | Pages 879-884
ICF | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-879
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the world's largest and most powerful laser system for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high energy density (HED) science. NIF is a 192- beam, Nd-glass laser facility that is capable of producing 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light, making it over fifty times more energetic than other existing ICF facilities. The NIF Project began in 1995 and completed in 2009. Ignition experiments using tritium on NIF have just commenced. Tritium arrives at the facility in individual fuel reservoirs that are mounted and connected to a target on the Cryogenic TARget POSitioner (TARPOS). CryoTARPOS provides the cryogenic cooling systems necessary to complete the formation of the ignition target's fuel ice layer, as well as the positioning system that transports and holds the target at the center of the NIF chamber during a shot. After a shot, unburned tritium is captured by the target chamber cryopumps. Upon regeneration, the cryopump effluent is directed to the Tritium Processing System, where elemental tritium is oxidized and captured on molecular sieve. Additional systems supporting tritium operations include area and stack tritium monitoring systems, local ventilation for contamination control, and a decontamination area that includes fume hoods and walk-in enclosures for working on contaminated components. This equipment has been used along with standard contamination control practices to manage the tritium hazard to workers and to limit releases to the environment to negligibly small amounts.