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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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.
D. A. Niebruegge, E. L. Tolman, C. W. Solbrig
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 68 | Number 3 | December 1978 | Pages 363-368
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27316
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thus far, existing computer programs have been adequate to predict the behavior of the loss-of-fluid test facility (LOFT) non-nuclear loss-of-coolant experiments. The work presented here describes a predictive capability for modeling nuclear experiments to determine if the same fuel can be used in several experiments. This is analogous to determining if fuel may be reused after a pressurized water reactor loss-of-coolant accident. We are concerned here with discussing only best-estimate calculations for experimental predictions and not the conservative models used for licensing. It was found that an adequate analysis procedure could be established by modeling accurately the fuel stored energy before the experiment is initiated. The initial stored energy in the fuel was found to be the most important fuel rod parameter influencing the maximum cladding temperature obtained in the transient.