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X-energy forms partnership with Talen Energy to assess Xe-100 deployment
X-energy announced Thursday that it has signed a letter of intent with Talen Energy to assess the deployment of X-energy’s Xe-100 reactor in Pennsylvania and throughout the market area of the PJM Interconnection regional transmission organization. That area, where the companies intend to explore the deployment of at least three four-unit Xe-100 power plants, includes several states in the eastern United States, from New Jersey to Illinois.
Bethany Burkhardt, Steven Krahn, Timothy Ault, Brandon Chisholm, Steven Lemasters, Kevin Adams (Vanderbilt Univ), Andrew Sowder (EPRI)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 224-230
Many software-enabled nuclear fuel cycle simulation tools (FCSTs) have been developed to support a range of end-users and to answer a range of questions. However, documentation of software-enabled FCST functionalities and capabilities has been limited, and most FCSTs have been designed to address a narrow set of questions such as reactor performance or nuclear fuel characteristics. Given the limited user community and resources, these tools are generally developed without the benefit of best practices from the commercial software engineering field. This paper provides a snapshot of the current population of FCSTs. In all, 16 software-enabled FCSTs were reviewed based on survey input from software developer and end-user communities. The survey instrument was organized by five major software architectural categories: functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and supportability. Because of the limited end-user population and noncommercial nature of software development efforts, the publicly shared results have been anonymized and limited primarily to population-level findings and trends.