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India’s PFBR attains criticality at last
Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaimed it “a proud moment for India” when on April 6 the 500-MWe, sodium-cooled Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) achieved initial criticality. This milestone, which comes some 22 years after the continually delayed PFBR project began, marks India’s entrance into the second stage of its three-stage nuclear program, which has the ultimate goal of supporting the country’s nuclear power program with its significant thorium reserves.
Laura Laghi, Enrico Schiassi, Mario De Florio, Roberto Furfaro, Domiziano Mostacci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 2373-2403
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2160604
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work aims to solve six problems with four different physics-informed machine learning frameworks and compare the results in terms of accuracy and computational cost. First, we considered the diffusion-advection-reaction equations, which are second-order linear differential equations with two boundary conditions. The first algorithm is the classic Physics-Informed Neural Networks. The second one is Physics-Informed Extreme Learning Machine. The third framework is Deep Theory of Functional Connections, a multilayer neural network based on the solution approximation via a constrained expression that always analytically satisfies the boundary conditions. The last algorithm is the Extreme Theory of Functional Connections (X-TFC), which combines Theory of Functional Connections and shallow neural network with random features [e.g., Extreme Learning Machine (ELM)]. The results show that for these kinds of problems, ELM-based frameworks, especially X-TFC, overcome those using deep neural networks both in terms of accuracy and computational time.