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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.
George E. Apostolakis, John P. Koser, Gaku Sato
Nuclear Technology | Volume 146 | Number 2 | May 2004 | Pages 181-198
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3497
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For nuclear utilities to become competitive in a deregulated electricity market, costs must be reduced, safety must be maintained, and interested stakeholders must remain content with the decisions being made. One way to reduce costs is to reduce the frequency of preventive maintenance and testing. However, these changes must be weighed against their impact on safety and stakeholder relations. We present a methodology that allows the evaluation of decision options using a number of objectives that include safety, economics, and stakeholder relations. First, the candidate decision options are screened to make sure that they satisfy the relevant regulatory requirements. The remaining options are evaluated using multiattribute utility theory. The results of the formal analysis include a ranking of the options according to their desirability as well as the major reasons that explain this ranking. These results are submitted to a deliberative process in which the decision makers scrutinize the results to ensure that they are meaningful. During the deliberation, new decision options may be formulated based on the insights that the formal analysis provides, as happened in the case study of this paper. This case study deals with the reduction in frequency of the containment integrated leak rate test of a boiling water reactor.