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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.
Teruhisa Takamatsu et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1290-1294
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A867
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A magnetron discharge as a built-in ion source have studied both experimentally and numerically for a compact discharge-type fusion neutron source called IECF (Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion). With this magnetron discharge, ions are produced in the vicinity of the vacuum chamber (anode) at negative electric potential. Therefore, produced ions are expected to have nearly full energy corresponding to the applied voltage to the IECF cathode but slightly smaller energy preventing them from hitting the anode of the opposite end, eventually improving both fusion reaction rate and ion recirculation life. Also, the magnetron ion source was found to produce ample ion current for maintenance of the discharge. With the optimization of the configuration of the magnetron discharge, further improvement of the fusion reaction rate is found feasible.