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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. Ligou
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 1977 | Pages 31-40
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27001
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
On the basis of a point kinetic model (adiabatic approximation), the explosion of fissionable pellets is analyzed. The needed kinetic parameters are derived from steady-state multigroup transport calculations. The effect of the reflectors is included not only in the critical mass determination but also in the kinetic behavior of the pellets through the effective lifetime. Although the hydrodynamic expansion is not considered, fuel burnup is taken into account to ascertain the time needed for maximum efficiency. This time is then compared to the disassembly time. A simple formalism is included that directly gives the microexplosion efficiency. Most of the numerical results are related to Li-D-reflected plutonium pellets. The ignition of the fission chain reactions is provided by fusion neutrons produced in the reflector, but the bootstrap mechanism between fission and fusion is not included.