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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.
Kenji Sumita, Akito Takahashi, Toshiyuki Iida, Junji Yamamoto
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 106 | Number 3 | November 1990 | Pages 249-265
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE90-A29054
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
OKTAVIAN I was built at Osaka University and has been operated since 1981 as an intense deuterium-tritium (D-T) neutron source at 1.5-ns pulses of 103 D-T neutron/pulse or as a continuous neutron source of 3 × 1012 D-T neutron/s at maximum. This national facility has been devoted mainly to studies on fusion neutron-related subjects by university researchers nationwide and has also served for international collaborations. Annual operating time is usually >1000 h for neutron supply with no special maintenance difficulties. OKTAVIAN consists of a high-current deuteron beam accelerator with some special provisions for maintaining a high D+ atomic ratio for D-T neutron production, highly effective water-cooled rotating solid Ti-T targets for continuous neutron supply, and a nanosecond intense pulse beam supply system with a small air-cooled solid Ti-T target. Special care has been taken to prevent the spread of tritium contamination in- and outside of the facility. Many fusion neutronics experiments have been carried out for the fundamental study of D-T fusion neutron transport characteristics. They have served to improve the evaluated nuclear data files and to test the calculational methods for fusion reactor design, e.g., a series of double-differential cross-section measurements of fusion material by pulsed operation and tritium breeding ratio measurements using a 120-cm natural lithium metal sphere by pulsed or continuous beam operation. OKTAVIAN has been also used for neutron irradiation using continuous D-T neutrons. Several D-T neutron damage experiments have been performed for optical and electronic instruments and components for fusion engineering. The OKTAVIAN-II project, which proposes to supply ∼20 times more intense D-T neutrons than the present facility, is under investigation. Design studies have been carried out, and a series of bench-test experiments is in preparation.