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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.
R. M. Westfall
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 79 | Number 2 | October 1981 | Pages 237-239
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-4
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As part of a standards effort of the American Nuclear Society to establish subcritical mass limits for the transuranium actinides, critical masses were calculated for seven actinide elements in bare, water-reflected, and steel-reflected metal systems. For the nuclides 242Pu and 241Am, values obtained with ENDF/B-V cross-section data were in much better agreement with values inferred from experimental measurement than were initial values calculated with ENDF/B-IV data. A brief description of the analytical methods employed is followed by a presentation of the results.