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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.
Isao Murata, Takamasa Mori, Masayuki Nakagawa
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 1 | May 1996 | Pages 96-109
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24215
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The method to treat randomly distributed spherical fuels in continuous energy Monte Carlo calculations has been established. In this method, the location of a spherical fuel is sampled probabilistically along the particle flight path from the spatial probability distribution of spherical fuels, called the nearest neighbor distribution. The necessary probability distribution was evaluated by a newly developed Monte Carlo hard sphere packing simulation code, which employs a random vector synthesis method to reduce overlaps of spherical fuels. The obtained probability distribution was validated by comparing a cross-section photograph of a real fuel compact and an X-ray diffraction experimental result. This method was installed in a Monte Carlo particle transport code and validated by an inventory check of spherical fuels and criticality calculations of ordered packing models. Also, an analysis of a critical assembly experiment was performed with the new code. As a result, it was confirmed that the method was applicable to practical reactor analysis. The method established is quite unique in the respect of probabilistically modeling the geometry of a great number of spherical fuels distributed randomly without any loss of the advantage of the continuous energy method.