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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.
Üner Çolak, Volkan Seker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 131-137
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE04-17
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, the criticality analysis for a pebble bed reactor, HTR-10, is performed with Monte Carlo simulations. The MCNP4B code package is utilized in the analysis with ENDF/B-VI continuous energy cross sections. The full core with the initial loading case is considered in simulations. The variation of the effective multiplication factor as a function of core loading height is also analyzed. Three different geometrical models are employed to see the effect of geometrical detail on the criticality calculations. Results are compared with diffusion calculations as well as the experimental data. Results show that the use of the homogenized fuel zone model does not yield acceptable results and underestimates the core criticality. However, the results obtained by using models with uniform and randomly distributed coated fuel particles in the fuel zone are in quite good agreement and there is not any systematic difference. Furthermore, criticality values do not change significantly with different random arrangements of coated fuel particles in fuel spheres. However, the random and irregular arrangements of pebbles may result in statistically different criticality values at least due to varying streaming effect.