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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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DOE issues new NEPA rule and procedures—and accelerates DOME reactor testing
Meeting a deadline set in President Trump’s May 23 executive order “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” the DOE on June 30 updated information on its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rulemaking and implementation procedures and published on its website an interim final rule that rescinds existing regulations alongside new implementing procedures.
E. A. Schneider, U. B. Phathanapirom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 416-429
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces VEGAS, a lightweight and fast-executing fuel cycle simulator primarily intended to augment higher-fidelity fuel cycle simulators. VEGAS can act as a preconditioner as well as a platform for implementing endogenous decision making within these simulators. In preconditioner mode, VEGAS offers an iterative method for accelerating the convergence of fuel cycle optimization problems while ensuring that material balance and other constraints are met. The methodology utilized by VEGAS, particularly its mass balance and reactor deployment algorithms, is presented here. Unique to the VEGAS simulator is a rollback feature that undoes reactor build decisions if material balance constraints are violated. Included in the VEGAS code is an economics package, also documented here, that calculates the evolving levelized cost of electricity. Benchmark comparisons against the VISION (Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation Model) simulator are also presented, along with an example of VEGAS’s preconditioning capability in which the objective is to achieve a target system transuranics inventory while installing as little reprocessing capacity as possible.