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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.
Pavel M. Bokov, Danas Ridikas, Igor Slessarev, Oliver Köberl
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 151 | Number 3 | November 2005 | Pages 335-343
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2552
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Core subcriticality can play an important role if the safety enhancement of a nuclear system is necessary, in particular, when minor actinides submitted for transmutation cause essential degradation of the reactivity feedback effects or/and significant reduction of the delayed neutron fraction. The present work shows that core subcriticality together with thermohydraulics optimization can compensate for the possible degradation of the Doppler effect and the reduction of the delayed neutron fraction. The particular dependence of the spallation neutron yield allows the creation of a supplementary negative feedback effect in case of accelerator coupled hybrid systems. A number of quantitative examples are provided in this context.