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Aalo and Antares progress on Reactor Pilot Program
Two participants in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program have recently announced significant milestones on their associated reactor projects. Aalo Atomics successfully completed its final design review (FDR), and Antares Nuclear has received DOE approval of its preliminary documented safety analysis (PDSA).
Juan A. Monleon de la Lluvia, Mariya Brovchenko, Dimitri Rochman, Eric Dumonteil
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 2 | February 2026 | Pages 257-279
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2510048
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study explores methodologies for propagating nuclear data uncertainties in radiation shielding calculations. The work is motivated by the aging of pressurized water reactor vessels, where quantifying uncertainties can contribute to improved risk assessment. In this context, the present analysis serves as a preliminary step toward more complex, application-specific scenarios. Two approaches are considered: first-order second-moment (FOSM) sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo sampling (MCS), both implemented through MCNP6.3. In the FOSM approach, we examine the use of variance reduction in combination with sensitivity calculations, while the MCS method is optimized to address its higher computational demand. Our analysis revealed discrepancies in certain cases when applying variance reduction with sensitivity calculations, which may compromise its applicability under certain conditions. Conversely, the MCS approach, using Sobol and Latin hypercube sampling with fast Total Monte Carlo or Fast GRS techniques, yielded results comparable to FOSM. These findings suggest that using MCS for propagating nuclear data uncertainties in shielding problems should be feasible, while maintaining computational demand similar to that of traditional first-order methods. Future work will test this approach in more complex, realistic configurations.