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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.
M. Khatib-Rahbar, E. Cazzoli, M. Lee, H. Nourbakhsh, R. Davis, E. Schmidt
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 102 | Number 3 | July 1989 | Pages 219-259
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A27476
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A probabilistic approach to quantifying uncertainties in the progression of severe reactor accidents is formulated and applied to the Source Term Code Package. It is shown that Quantification of uncertainties at the basic level of input parameters reveals broad time-dependent uncertainties in the core melt progression, containment challenges, and fission product releases. Dominant contributors to the source term uncertainties include the core meltdown parameters, the release rate coefficients of fission products, the chemical activity coefficients during core/concrete interactions, and containment performance.