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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.
Douglas C. Bauer, Claude G. Poncelet
Nuclear Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | March 1974 | Pages 165-189
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT74-A31388
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several more efficient and effective xenon spatial control procedures have been developed through simulation research at Carnegie-Mellon University and verification on an operating commercial pressurized water reactor at the Point Beach Plant in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The developed spatial control procedures have taken the role of the human operator into realistic account. First Overtone Control provides an efficient and effective approach with an accommodatable, if stiff, premium on the timeliness of intervention. Overstressed Direct Offset Control (DOC) improves the efficiency of Simple DOC, the current procedure, by managing a trade-off between spatial xenon and iodine effects throughout a shorter control period. Collectively, the alternative control approaches focus attention on causes rather than symptoms (i.e., xenon and iodine spatial redistribution by flux) and highlight the importance of early action to restore iodine equilibration. The spatial control procedures were reliably executed by the Point Beach operators normally assigned to a watch. They demonstrated the capability necessary to exercise whatever judgments were called for in the timing and control-rod insertions and retractions needed. The future growth of nuclear power plants into more complex loading patterns that will induce spatial flux oscillations (particularly later in life) suggests that the premium on efficient and effective control procedures for xenon spatial effects will increase.