USA: nuclear fusion will be regulated differently from fission
The top regulatory agency for nuclear materials safety in the United States voted unanimously to regulate the fledgling fusion industry differently from that of nuclear fission, and fusion startups are celebrating this achievement as a major victory.
As a result, some provisions specific to fission reactors, such as requiring funding to cover nuclear fusion claims, will not apply to fusion plants. (Fusion reactors cannot fuse).
“Until now there was real uncertainty about how fusion would be regulated in the US. This decision clarifies who will regulate fusion energy facilities and what developers will need to do to comply with those regulations,” Andrew Holland, CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC. “ It was an extremely important choice “.
Other differences include relaxed requirements regarding foreign ownership of nuclear fusion facilities and the waiver of federally mandated hearings during the permitting process, Holland said. This will also facilitate the acquisition of technologies from abroad or the investment of foreign operators who arrive earlier in the realization of the fusion.
The decision had been in the pipeline for some time. On Jan. 4, NRC staff presented three recommendations to the commission's decision-making committee on how to regulate the merger.
NRC spokesman Scott Burnell told CNBC the options were: regulate fusion in the same way as nuclear fission, regulate fusion based on the materials involved in the process, or take a hybrid approach. In that presentation, NRC staffers suggested that regulating fusion like fission "is hardly compatible with our rules," Burnell told CNBC. However, the decision was not final until the entire committee voted in favor of this position.
Therefore the NRC, the US specialized control commission, considers fusion less dangerous than fission, and with a lower probability of generating radioactive by-products lasting hundreds or thousands of years, as occurs instead for fission. Have they done well or have they underestimated the risks of a reaction which, in its original form, produces a large quantity of neutrons, potentially capable of making many materials dangerously radioactive? We will see it when the first functioning plants are built.
Meanwhile, private companies in the US engaged in fission have already raised $5 billion in capital.
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The article USA: Nuclear fusion will be regulated differently from fission comes from Scenari Economics .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/usa-la-fusione-nucleare-verra-regolamentata-in-modo-diverso-dalla-fissione/ on Thu, 04 May 2023 11:00:27 +0000.