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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.
Milan P. Pesic
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 2 | October 2003 | Pages 225-233
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2378
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The RB reactor was designed as a natural-uranium, heavy water, nonreflected critical assembly in the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1958. From 1962 until 2002, numerous critical experiments were carried out with low-enriched uranium and high-enriched uranium fuel elements of tubular shape, known as the Russian TVR-S fuel assembly type, placed in various heavy water square lattices within the RB cylindrical aluminum tank. Some of these well-documented experiments were selected, described, evaluated, and accepted for inclusion in the "International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments," contributing to the preservation of a rather small number of heavy water benchmark critical experiments.