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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.
Yoichi Watanabe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 118 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 178-185
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A19383
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electrical conductivities of weakly ionized nuclear plasmas were computed by numerically solving an electron Boltzmann equation. A pure 3He gas and 3He-Na gaseous mixtures were analyzed. The gases are ionized by fast ions (0.19-MeV tritons and 0.59-MeV protons), which are generated from in situ neutron-3He nuclear reactions. The results show that the electrical conductivity of the 3He-Na gaseous mixtures is higher than that of the pure helium gas because of the enhanced ionization of seeded sodium atoms by subexcitation electrons. This effect is not included in a standard Maxwellian model. An analytical formula of W values for gaseous mixtures was suggested to incorporate the effect of subexcitation electrons. The formula can be applied to analyze chemically complex systems.