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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.
Man Gyun Na, Won Il Ko, Hangbok Choi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 142 | Number 3 | November 2002 | Pages 315-326
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE02-A2310
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A combination method of spent pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel is proposed that adjusts the fuel composition for direct use of spent PWR fuel in Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors (DUPIC). This method reduces the composition heterogeneity (variation) of the DUPIC fuel caused by directly reusing spent PWR fuel as DUPIC fuel feedstock. In this study, a combination method was used to find the optimum mixture composition from the spent PWR fuel database by minimizing the composition variation of the major fissile isotopes 235U and 239Pu. The simulation results have shown that the combination method can reduce the composition variation of 235U and 239Pu to 0.11 and 1.40%, respectively, through assemblywise mixing operation only. It is also believed that the result could be improved further through a rodwise combination technique if the isotopic composition of each spent PWR fuel rod is known by direct measurement during the DUPIC fuel fabrication process.