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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.
P. R. Henkel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 96 | Number 2 | June 1987 | Pages 137-144
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A16373
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fragmentation of molten cladding films into rivulets and single waves is investigated. This problem is especially relevant to liquid-metal fast breeder reactor safety analysis because of its impact on the flow regime of the clad melt. Among other effects, various instabilities may contribute to film breakup. In the axial direction, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability can arise. As the Sandia transient axial relocation experiments frequently exhibit, an azimuthal fragmentation process also occurs. Consequently, another instability due to thermocapillarity is proposed.