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August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
Stephen King, Thien Nguyen, Yassin Hassan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 7 | July 2024 | Pages 1245-1257
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2259699
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New developments in porous media modeling have allowed for a new opportunity to implement experimental data for validation and verification. This includes velocity measurements using particle image velocimetry and global pressure drop measurements that are used to produce pressure drop correlations. We conducted such experiments on two very similar facilities of packed spheres by the authors of this paper. The results from the measurements are presented in this paper as a complete experimental study of a packed bed of smooth spheres through a two-prong approach. First, a set of global pressure drop correlations are validated with experimental data and presented as a function of porous Reynolds numbers. Second, the local velocity measurements from three depths spanning 2.4 sphere diameters are presented and further analyzed through the use of a normalized probability distribution function of the time-resolved velocity field. The conclusion of this paper is a suggestion for the results to be used in the creation or validation of computational fluid dynamics porous media models in the measured flow regimes for a packed bed of smooth spheres with an aspect ratio between the sphere diameter and the empty column diameter of 4.4.