ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Edwin M. Larsen, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, Mark S. Ortman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 41 | Number 1 | November 1978 | Pages 12-26
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32129
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 1000-MW(electric) laser fusion reactor design of the University of Wisconsin, SOLASE, is fueled by inserting cryogenic deuterium-tritium pellets containing a milligram of fuel into a spherical cavity having a 6-m radius at a rate of 20 Hz. The cavity is surrounded by a honeycomb graphite structure divided into 16 longitudinal segments through which lithium oxide particles (100 to 200 µm in diameter and with a pore length of 1 µm) flow by gravity. The total oxide inventory is 1 mg. The lithium oxide, which contains 0.1 wt% water, serves as both a tritium breeder and a heat transport medium. The oxide enters the blanket at 673 K and exits at 873 K except for a 2% side stream exiting at 1123 K, from which the tritium is recovered. At this temperature, a residence time of 300 s at a flow rate of 163 kg/s is required to condense the daily tritium supply as HTO on a cold surface. The 873 K lithium oxide is transported to a steam generator fabricated from Croloy tubes. In addition to the fuel, the container, either borosilicate glass or polyvinylalcohol (PVA), and a polymer ablator, the pellets contain a high-Z material, here xenon. Also, ∼30 mg of neon are frozen on the outside surface to ensure cryogenic conditions during flight. Some pellet constituents will react with the wall, resulting in erosion. Unburned hydrogen species will react with graphite to form acetylene at a rate estimated to be 63 pm/s (2 mm/yr) for glass and PVA shells at pumping speeds of 6.4 and 8.4 Pa · m3/s (4.8 × 104 and 6.3 × 104 Torr · ℓ/s) at 300 K, respectively. The oxygen debris will erode the graphite by carbon monoxide formation at maximum rates of 6.3 and 25.4 pm/s, respectively, for glass and PVA shells. The total erosion rate is within the expected lifetime of the blanket (1 yr) based on radiation damage studies. The reactor exhaust is predominantly neon, so that hydrogen isotope recovery and recycle is essentially a neon purification process. The fill time for glass pellets is estimated to be 5 days and for PVA pellets, 1 day. This results in a total tritium inventory of 26 and 11 kg, respectively, for a lithium oxide blanket containing 1 kg of tritium. Anticipated tritium losses include 1.5 to 2.2 kBq/kg H2O (40 to 60 nCi/ℓ H2O) of tritium to the water in the reheaters and steam generators and <400 kBq/s (1 Ci/day) for atmospheric losses. This study shows the necessity for experimental work on the thermodynamic properties of well-characterized lithium oxide.