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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.
Brian D. Hehr, Ayman I. Hawari, Victor H. Gillette
Nuclear Technology | Volume 160 | Number 2 | November 2007 | Pages 251-256
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3897
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Graphite, a key structural and moderator material in the proposed Generation IV roadmap, is expected to experience irradiation at temperatures up to 1800 K. In this study, a molecular dynamics (MD) code is developed for the purpose of performing atomistic simulations of high-temperature graphite. The MD computations are benchmarked against thermal expansion and mean-squared displacement data, and modifications to the potential energy function are devised as needed to fit experimental measurements. Graphite-specific alterations include a plane-by-plane center-of-mass velocity correction, anisotropy in the potential energy cutoff function, and temperature-dependent parameterization of the interatomic potential. The refined MD model is then employed to investigate the threshold displacement energy at temperatures of 300 and 1800 K. It was found that the threshold displacement energy depends strongly on the knock-on direction, yet the angle-averaged threshold energy exhibits relatively little variation with temperature.