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August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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.
Ethan Coffey, Tim Bigelow, Ira Griffith, Greg Hanson, Arnold Lumsdaine, Claire Luttrell, David Rasmussen, Chuck Schaich, Bill Wolframe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 383-387
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-962
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Finite element analysis calculations are performed to determine the temperature profile in sections of the ITER Electron Cyclotron Heating (ECH) transmission line waveguide. Each aluminum, corrugated waveguide transmission line will transmit up to 1.5 MW of electromagnetic radiation over roughly 200 meters from a 170 GHz gyrotron to heat the plasma in the tokamak. The “ridged tube” waveguide has integral water cooling traces which are lined with copper tubing. Each transmission line includes miter bends which may be actively cooled and waveguide couplings, where the waveguide cannot be actively cooled due to coupling hardware. The amount of cooling water available is limited, so determining the required amount of water in the cooling lines is essential. Finite element computational analyses are performed to determine the effect of the heat load and water cooling on the temperature profile of the waveguide in various steady-state cases.