Understanding of the behavior of oxide fuel and blanket pins during slow transients with ramps between 0.1 and 10%/s is of importance because of the higher likelihood of such operational transient events. Compared to faster transients for which a fair amount of knowledge exists through testing in TREAT, there is also some concern of whether the oxide pins are particularly vulnerable to slower transients. For these reasons, a cooperative program between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Japanese Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC) was launched to conduct operational transient testing (OTT) on oxide pins in EBR-II. A total of eleven tests is included in this OTT program. The status of the five extended-overpower-transient tests on preirradiated EBR-II pins is the subject of this paper.

This paper explores the impact of an HOL on the development of the distributed computer control system for Nova laser fusion facility. As the world's most powerful glass laser, Nova will generate 150 trillion watt pulses of infrared light focused onto fusion targets a few millimeters in diameter. It will perform experiments designed to explore the feasibility of fusion as an energy source of the future. Nova will utilize fifty microcomputers and four VAX-11/780's in a distributed process control computer system architecture.