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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.
F. Winterberg
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 56 | Number 1 | January 1975 | Pages 83-84
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A26622
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The consequences of igniting a small fissionable pellet by laser-beam or relativistic electron-beam induced high density implosion-compression on future reactor technology are discussed. It is shown that with this method a highly efficient reactor system becomes possible by direct magnetohydrodynamic conversion of the expanding fireball into a magnetic cavity. The method not only will lead to an “absolutely” safe fast breeder reactor but by using hybrid pellets consisting of a combination of both fissionable and fusionable materials in addition will also lead to a combined fission-fusion energy producing system. In such a fission-fusion hybrid system, whereby the fission process produces a large amount of heat and the fusion process produces a large number of neutrons, the bootstrap coupling between the fission and fusion processes greatly increases the rate of the ensuing chain reaction and hence energy output enhancing substantially the energy yield of the micro-explosions.