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Deployable Energy achieves criticality at INL
Ahead of the July 4 deadline set by President Trump in Executive Order 14301, the nuclear community has been following the developments of the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, in which companies have been pursuing DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. The EO set an ambitious goal of three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
A. Vidal-Ferràndiz, A. Carreño, D. Ginestar, C. Demazière, G. Verdú
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1067-1078
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1756617
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mechanical vibrations of core internals such as fuel assemblies (FAs) cause oscillations in the neutron flux that require in some circumstances nuclear power plants to operate at a reduced power level. This work simulates and analyzes the changes of the neutron flux throughout a nuclear core due to the oscillation of a single FA without considering thermal-hydraulic feedback. The amplitude of the FA vibration is bounded to a few millimeters, and this implies the use of fine meshes and accurate numerical solvers due to the different scales of the problem. The results of the simulations show a main oscillation of the neutron flux with the same frequency as the FA vibration along with other harmonics at multiples of the vibration frequency much smaller in amplitude. Also, this work compares time domain analysis and frequency domain analysis of the mechanical vibrations. Numerical results show a close match between these two approaches for the fundamental frequency.