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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.
Charles W. Townley, James E. Howes, Jr., Gilbert E. Raines, Ward S. Diethorn, Duane N. Sttnderman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 10 | Number 4 | August 1961 | Pages 346-351
doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A15376
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A radiochemical technique has been developed for the determination of the release rates of short-lived fission gases from fuel specimens during irradiation. Fission-product gases with half-lives ranging from 1.7 sec to 3.9 min were employed in the development of the procedure. These were krypton-89, xenon-137, xenon-140, and xenon-141. The procedure involves the collection and analysis of the solid daughter products of these gases. The gases are swept through a long tube packed with stainless steel mesh, and the daughter products deposit on the mesh as they are formed. The mesh is analyzed radiochemically for the daughter species, strontium-89, cesium-137, barium-140, and cerium-141. From the results of these analyses, the release rates of the parent fission gases may be calculated with a knowledge of the transit time of the gases through the tran and the transport time from the point of release to the trap entrance.