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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.
C. J. Mueller, J. K. Vaurio
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 69 | Number 2 | February 1979 | Pages 264-278
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A20616
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes the basic equations and solution techniques of a collection of heat transfer and coolant voiding dynamics models that have been developed and successfully applied to simulate hypothetical accidents in liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) to the point of permanent subcriticality or to the initiation of a prompt-critical excursion. These models emphasize analytic and integral solution techniques to minimize computational time and have been programmed into the SACO fast-running accident analysis computer code. The comparisons of SACO results to analogous SAS3D results used to qualify these models are illustrated and discussed. The fast-running nature of these models makes them an ideal sensitivity analysis tool for use in probabilistic evaluations of LMFBR accidents. Their use in this application is illustrated.