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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 D. Bohm, Mohamed E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 331-335
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-981
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In ITER, determination of radiation loads such as nuclear heating due to neutrons and photons (gammas) is an important part of the design process. Monte Carlo transport codes need accurate neutron and photon cross section libraries to produce accurate results. Because photon heating dominates the contribution to total nuclear heating for common materials like stainless steel and copper in several key components of ITER, the photon cross section library is particularly important. In this work, two ITER realistic benchmark calculation models are used to determine the impact on nuclear heating by the cross section library used in the calculation. The results show that the nuclear heating can be as much as 5% lower to as much as 6% higher than the nuclear heating calculated using the standard fusion neutron and photon cross section library.