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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.
V. Spiegel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 53 | Number 3 | March 1974 | Pages 326-327
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23358
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effective half-life of 252Cf has been determined as 2.638 ± 0.007 yr. The method utilized the ratio of the manganese activity induced in a manganous-sulfate bath by a 252Cf spontaneous-fission neutron source and the National Bureau of Standards photo-neutron source to measure the change in emission rate of the 252Cf source over a period of 1.77 half-lives. The data were corrected for the activity of radium (1622-yr half-life) in the photoneutron source (-0.2%) and for the competing neutron production from 250Cf.
