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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.
Sol Pearlstein
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 3 | December 1999 | Pages 402-408
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3040
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Given sufficient material, a large number of actinides could be used to form bare-metal criticals. The effective delayed neutron fraction for a bare critical comprised of a fissile material is comparable with the absolute delayed neutron fraction. The effective delayed neutron fraction for a bare critical composed of a fissionable material is reduced by factors of 2 to 10 when compared with the absolute delayed neutron fraction. When the effective delayed neutron fraction is small, the difference between delayed and prompt criticality is small, and extreme caution must be used in critical assemblies of these materials. This study uses an approximate but realistic model to survey the actinide region to compare effective delayed neutron fractions with absolute delayed neutron fractions.