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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.
R. W. Ostensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 43 | Number 3 | May 1979 | Pages 301-313
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A19219
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a core disruptive accident in a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor, rearrangement of core materials may lead to a prompt critical excursion. Damage to the primary containment, especially the head seals and head bolts, caused by the subsequent core disassembly is a primary concern of hypothetical accident analysis. A systematic study has been performed to evaluate the sensitivity of that damage in a commercial size reactor to various uncertainties. The damage is very insensitive to the equation-of-state of the fuel but highly sensitive to the reactivity ramp rate through prompt critical. From the point of view of vessel damage calculations, these results indicate that there is little incentive to improve our equation-of-state data on unirradiated mixed-oxide fuel.