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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.
Zoran Dragojlovic, Charles Kessel, Rene Raffray, Farrokh Najmabadi, Lester Waganer, Laila El-Guebaly, Leslie Bromberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 913-917
Power Plants, Demo, and Next Steps | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9026
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new computational model for fusion power plant system studies is being developed for the ARIES program. An operational design space has been created to explore the most influential parameters in the physical, technological and economic trade space related to the developmental transition from experimental facilities to viable commercial power plants. This allows examination of a multi-dimensional trade space as opposed to traditional sensitivity analyses about a baseline design point. The influence of multifunctional, highly dependent parameters can easily be visualized, which may highlight one or a few difficult-to-achieve parameters that would yield a highly acceptable design solution. The new ARIES systems code consists of adaptable physics, engineering and costing modules which capture the current tokamak knowledge database and reflect both near-term as well as advanced technology solutions that are higher risk but have higher performance potential. To fully assess the impact of the range of physics and engineering implementations, the plant cost accounts have been revised to reflect a more functional cost structure. All of these features have been validated against the highly respected ARIES-AT baseline. The present results demonstrate novel visualization techniques for trade space assessment of attractive tokamaks for commercial use.