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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.
J. E. Brockmann, W. W. Tarbell
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 88 | Number 3 | November 1984 | Pages 342-356
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE84-3
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pressurized ejection of melt from a reactor pressure vessel has been identified as an important element of a severe reactor accident. Copious aerosol production is observed when thermitically generated melts pressurized with nitrogen or carbon dioxide to 1.3 to 17 MPa are ejected into an air atmosphere. Aerosol particle size distributions measured in the tests have modes of ∼0.5, 5, and >10 µm. Mechanisms leading to formation of these multimodal size distributions are suggested. This aerosol is a potentially important fission product source term that has not been considered in previous severe accident analyses.