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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.
Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 57 | Number 2 | May 1982 | Pages 220-227
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A26284
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Computation of nuclear reactor fuel behavior under normal and off-normal conditions is influenced by gap conductance models. These models should provide accurate results for heat transfer for arbitrary gap widths and gas mixtures and should be based on considerations of the kinetic theory of gases. There has been considerable progress in the study of heat transfer in a simple gas for arbitrary Knudsen numbers (Kn = l/, where l is a mean-free-path and is the gap width) in recent years. Using these recent results, a simple expression for heat transfer in a gas mixture (enclosed between parallel plates) for an arbitrary Knudsen number has been constructed, and a new model for gap conductance has been proposed. The latter reproduces the free molecular (small gap, Kn ≫ 1) and the jump limits (large gaps, Kn ≪ 1) correctly, and it provides fairly accurate results for arbitrary gap widths. The new model is suitable for use in large fuel behavior computer programs.