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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.
Donald Strominger and Gordon Schlesinger
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 21 | Number 4 | April 1965 | Pages 441-450
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A18788
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Solid-state p-n junction counters have been fabricated to measure fission rates of materials with different fission thresholds. The fission reactions are caused by neutrons varying in energy from thermal energies for U235 to 1.5 MeV for Th232. The data gathered from these solid-state fission counters have been used to compare experimental with calculated fission rates in the AETR cores. The fission counter is assembled by placing an electroplated foil of a fissionable material near a p-n junction detector. An aluminum cap is placed over each detector and foil to form a neat, compact assembly. The resulting counter is small enough to fit inside a reactor with minimum distortion to the neutron spectrum. Fission counters employing Th232, U233, U234, U235, U236, U238, Np237, and Pu239 as the principal fissionable material have been successfully fabricated. These solid-state fission counters have proved reliable instruments to measure neutron fluxes in high gamma-ray fields. True fission events are easily separated from other induced reactions in the counter.