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Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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August 2026
Latest News
Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
B. Ploeckl, P. T. Lang, M. Kircher, A. Bock, A. Gude, F. Janky, B. Sieglin, W. Suttrop, W. Treutterer, T. Zehetbauer, the ASDEX Upgrade Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 3 | April 2021 | Pages 199-205
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1864172
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor plasma core fueling requires the injection of cryogenic pellets, most probably composed of a mixture of D2 and T2. Likely, pellet injection will be the most important actuator for plasma core density control. Therefore, pellet injection systems must be developed further that are capable of acting as actuator for density control. A novel control scheme is developed based on a centrifuge acceleration system. This scheme considers every available pellet launching slot and compares the current particle flux with the requested one. The response time is within the granularity of the available launching slots, in this case between 7 and 12 ms. First plasma experiments in feedforward mode showed excellent results, providing a good basis for upcoming plasma core density feedback control development activities.