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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.
M. Paraipan, V. M. Javadova, S. I. Tyutyunnikov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 1 | January 2024 | Pages 109-120
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2175582
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Conditions that maximize the performance of an accelerator-driven system related to particle beam and energy and accelerator type are analyzed. The toolkit Geant4 simulated the interaction of protons and ions with masses up to 20Ne and energies from 0.2 to 2 GeV/n. The beam intensity considered is 1.5 × 1016 p/s. The core of the reactor is modeled as an assembly of fuel rods surrounding a cylindrical beryllium converter, with a criticality coefficient of 0.985 and lead-bismuth eutectic coolant. Lower enrichment generates better utilization of fuel (20% to 25% from the initial actinide mass can fission in a cycle keeping neutron damage in clad below 200 displacements per atom). Data on particle fluence and energy released obtained from the simulation are used to calculate total electric power produced and isotope evolution. Power spent to accelerate the beam depends on accelerator type and is calculated by scaling from data on accelerator efficiency for a reference particle. Optimal proton energy is ~1.5 GeV when the beam is accelerated in a linac with energy gain G ~ 14 and is 0.75 to 1 GeV in the case of a cyclotron (G ~ 12). Ion beams starting with 4He realize higher G values than protons: 20 to 50 in a linac and 15 to 35 in a cyclotron.