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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.
Melvin Reier
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 43 | Number 3 | March 1971 | Pages 267-272
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A19972
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A germanium crystal has been used to measure the absolute intensity of gamma rays from the decay of 238Pu, 212Pb, 212Bi, and 208Tl in a 1 ½-W SNAP-15A heat source. In practically all cases, agreement with other measurements is excellent. In addition, the amount of 236Pu impurity originally present in the sample can be measured with an accuracy of 4%. It is estimated that the 236Pu content in a fuel sample that is several months old can easily be measured with an accuracy of 10%.
