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The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
Martin Lopez de Bertodano
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 117 | Number 2 | June 1994 | Pages 126-133
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A20079
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The objective of this analysis is to obtain an algebraic correlation for flooding and unflooding in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) hot leg during reflux core cooling. This correlation may be used in loss-of-coolant accident analysis codes such as RELAP5. The one-dimensional two-fluid model equations are solved to obtain a void fraction profile along the pipe. A jump condition is included in the model to account for the possibility of a hydraulic jump. The flooding correlation by Mishima and Ishii is used to determine the flooding point. The model is validated against the scaled-down data of Krolewski and the full-scale data of Ohnuki, Adachi, and Murao. Reducing the coefficient of the flooding correlation to match the full-scale data is necessary to account for the effect of diameter size. Based on the validated model, a flooding correlation is obtained along the lines of the Wallis flooding criterion. It is further shown that under the conditions prevalent during PWR refluxing, the hysteresis between flooding and unflooding is not relevant, so the same correlation is valid for both.