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The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
Bryce K. Y. Matsuo, Mark Anderson, Devesh Ranjan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 176 | Number 2 | February 2014 | Pages 138-153
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-85
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Geometrical effects on the local heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and pressure drop for supercritical carbon dioxide in printed-circuit heat exchangers are numerically quantified. Combinations of different operating pressures (7.5 to 10.2 MPa), mass fluxes [326 to 762 kg/(m2⋅s)], and the enhanced wall treatment k-ε and shear stress transport k-ω turbulence models are investigated using a finite-volume framework. Three different channel geometries are used: a nonchamfered zig-zag (ideal case), a chamfered zig-zag (prototype case), and an airfoil (ideal case). The simulations are compared with experimental results and empirical correlations. A new correlation is developed based on the numerical data obtained and published experimental data for the zig-zag channels. The results show that the local HTC increases with an increase in operating pressure or an increase in mass flux for each channel. The HTC of the zig-zag channel is found to be approximately 2.5 times that of the airfoil; however, the pressure drop is 4.0 to 8.3 times higher. Based on these results, the area goodness ratios of the nonchamfered and chamfered zig-zag channels are respectively 2.65 and 1.57 times larger than that of the airfoil.