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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.
H. W. Lewis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 98 | Number 1 | January 1988 | Pages 79-81
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23527
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Bayesian analysis is made of the probability of core melt (defined as “core on the floor”) for U.S. reactors, using methods that are an extension of those used in an earlier work, and that can therefore be used to answer different questions. The essential new point is that at any time the estimate of the probability of core melt varies continuously as melt-free experience accumulates, with a substantial effect on the estimates. The most interesting result is that the probability of no-melt-yet stays large somewhat longer than one might have guessed, largely because melt-free experience feeds on itself in reducing the probability of subsequent core melt, and this process continues until the first melt.