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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.
K. N. Schwinkendorf
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 121 | Number 1 | September 1995 | Pages 136-141
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE95-A24135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large computer codes have been created in the past to predict the energy release in hypothetical core disruptive accidents (CDA) postulated to occur in liquid-metal reactors (LMRs). These codes, such as SIMMER, are highly specific to LMR designs. More recent attention has focused on thermal-spectrum criticality accidents such as for fuel storage basins and waste tanks containing fissile material. This paper presents results from recent one-dimensional kinetics simulations, performed for a recriticality accident in a thermal spectrum. Reactivity insertion rates generally are smaller than in LMR CDAs, and the energetics generally are more benign. Parametric variation of input was performed, including reactivity insertion and initial temperature.