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GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
S. Mostafa Ghiaasiaan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 81 | Number 1 | April 1988 | Pages 28-38
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34076
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A model was developed to simulate thermal-hy-draulic phenomena in the downcomer and lower plenum of a pressurized water reactor during reflooding. The system dynamics were formulated in terms of a set of time-dependent ordinary differential equations that were integrated numerically. A model was developed to simulate the oscillatory flow in the downcomer-lower plenum-core system. A numerical procedure was devised for solving the governing global momentum equation. This procedure is shown to be numerically stable and computationally efficient. The developed model for downcomer and lower plenum was coupled to the core thermal-hydraulic model, and predictions were made for FLECHT-SET experimental data. The results compared well with the experiment.