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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.
Keith E. Asmussen, Paul Wälti
Nuclear Technology | Volume 15 | Number 3 | September 1972 | Pages 359-365
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A16033
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The plutonium loadings were determined for a test element for irradiation in the Peach Bottom HTGR. The test element is a graphite circular cylinder with an array of eight fuel rods in a circular pattern. The fuel rods contain dense spherical kernels of PuO2 or PuO2/3 ThO2. Be cause of the strong Pu resonances, the heterogeneity effects in the test element are strongly marked. A code for treating this rather complicated problem rigorously was not available. Thus the problem was simulated within a onedimensional transport code by equating three collision probabilities. The heterogeneities were seen to result in significant grain selfshielding, rod selfshielding, and mutual shielding of the rods. The Pu loading for the central fuel body of the test element was determined to be 19.0 g.