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Deployable Energy achieves criticality at INL
Ahead of the July 4 deadline set by President Trump in Executive Order 14301, the nuclear community has been following the developments of the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, in which companies have been pursuing DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. The EO set an ambitious goal of three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
Kwang J. Jeong, Joon Lim, Il S. Hwang, Hee D. Kim, Martin M. Pilch, Tze Y. Chu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 3 | September 2003 | Pages 347-357
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3422
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-temperature creep tests were performed with an SA533B1 low-alloy steel under both constant load and constant stress conditions. Using the measured minimum creep strain rates as a function of stress and temperature, least-square fittings were made into a Bailey-Norton-type power law equation. Based on the constant stress test results, a constitutive equation was developed for steady-state creep. The constitutive equation was then implemented in elastic-viscoplastic analysis of the lower head of a pressurized water reactor's reactor pressure vessel using a commercial FEM code named ABAQUS 5.8. The FEM model was validated using measured data from the lower head failure experiment conducted at the Sandia National Laboratories. The FEM model using the creep constitutive equation was shown to be capable of accurately predicting the lower head deformation behavior. Additional work, however, is needed to rationalize apparent inconsistency between the constant load data and constant stress data.