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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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.
Cody J. Permann, Andrea M. Jokisaari, Michael R. Tonks, Daniel Schwen, Derek R. Gaston, Fande Kong, Robert Hiromoto, Richard C. Martineau
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 7 | July 2021 | Pages 885-904
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1843893
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ability to identify features within finite element simulations and track them over time is necessary for understanding and quantifying complex behaviors as disparate as turbulent vortices in a flow field to microstructure evolution. We extend our previous research on feature identification in parallel unstructured meshes with the novel ability to maintain feature distinctness by dynamically remapping individual features to new simulation variables as the simulation evolves. We utilize this capability to drastically reduce the number of variables required in a simulation while maintaining the same fidelity as simulations without these reductions. We present this novel remapping algorithm and the corresponding implementation within the open-source Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework. We demonstrate the utility of the method with a novel phase-field model of irradiation-driven grain subdivision in UO2. Grain population statistics are tracked over time, and a dynamically stable population of grains with a reduced size evolves. These results indicate that the small grain sizes observed in high-burnup UO2 can be explained by this mechanism.