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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.
S. T. Perkins
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 69 | Number 2 | February 1979 | Pages 137-146
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A20605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The characteristics of neutron-induced fission in a compressed plasma composed of eqi-molar deuterium-tritium and plutonium are investigated. The slowing down parameters of the fission fragment—thermalization times, ranges, energy partitions, and spectra of suprathermal knock-on ions—are calculated for a wide variety of conditions. These results indicate that the fission fragment energy deposition can be regarded as both instantaneous and spatially localized with respect to the other processes of interest. Hence, all fragment energy will be deposited within any physical system. This will raise the energy of some of the plasma ions to a region where the fusion process is much more probable, thus enhancing the production of 14-MeV neutrons.