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Launching into tomorrow: NRIC guides new era of research and deployment
In June 2025, the Department of Energy announced the Reactor Pilot Program, an authorization pathway that allowed reactor developers to partner with the DOE to get first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactors built and tested. Soon after, the DOE rolled out a complementary Fuel Line Pilot Program, which aimed to fast-track fuel projects. In all, 20 projects were accepted into the new programs.
Joel A. Kulesza
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 2 | February 2026 | Pages 241-245
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2483123
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper resolves a perennial point of confusion regarding the source-weighting normalization factor recommended in the MCNP manual () to stochastically estimate the volume of a region within an enclosing inward-directed spherical surface source with radius . The normalization factor arises from the relationship between a sphere’ s mean chord length, its volume, and the values estimated by MCNP track-length tallies. A brief derivation is given that relates these quantities and results in the stated normalization. The correctness of this factor is demonstrated by estimating the volume of a variety of convex and nonconvex volumes. A heuristic demonstration of how biasing the inward-directed source reduces the statistical uncertainty of the stochastic volume estimate is also given, but a rigorous analysis of this improvement is left as future work.