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DOE selects first companies for nuclear launch pad
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center have announced their first selections for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad: three companies developing microreactors and one developing fuel supply.
The four companies—Deployable Energy, General Matter, NuCube Energy, and Radiant Industries—were selected from the initial pool of Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program applicants, the two precursor programs to the launch pad.
J. E. Houghtaling, J. E. Grund
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 36 | Number 3 | June 1969 | Pages 412-426
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A18738
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor kinetics investigations have been performed for cold-start-up, hot-start-up, hot-standby, and operating-power reactivity accidents using the UO2-fueled, pressurized-water type SPERT-III reactor. Power excursion behavior was predicted for every SPERT-III experiment by digital computer calculations using the SPERT-developed PARET code. Extrapolations for severe cold-start-up excursion consequences were obtained from severe transient tests on SPERT-III fuel samples in the SPERT-IV capsule driver core. Analyses of the SPERT-III data show that prompt moderator heating was as significant as the Doppler effect in limiting the magnitude of power excursions in the SPERT-III core at operating temperatures. Comparisons of calculations and experimental data demonstrate that PARET is capable of predicting power excursion behavior in SPERT-III within experimental uncertainty for the range of conditions investigated. The SPERT-III integral-core tests also provide a broad base of experimental data for demonstrations of the capabilities of other existing models in predicting non-damaging power excursion behavior in UO2-fueled reactors.