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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.
F. S. Felber
Nuclear Technology | Volume 50 | Number 2 | September 1980 | Pages 119-123
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32537
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three methods of fueling a small moving ring field-reversed mirror are considered: injection of fuel pellets accelerated by laser ablation, injection of fuel pellets accelerated by deflagration-gun ablation, and direct injection of plasma by a deflagration gun. A CO2 laser with pulse energy of several hundred joules and power consumption of tens of kilowatts can probably generate the necessary pellet velocities of ∼107 cm/s. The plasma beam of a deflagration gun might accelerate fuel pellets efficiently if beam focusing can be improved by about an order of magnitude. Deflagration guns are probably not presently capable of fueling a small reactor directly, but may become more attractive than laser-driven pellets if both average beam ion density and focusing can be improved, or if plasma density is lower than expected.