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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.
Laura Price, Halim Alsaed, Eduardo Basurto, Alex Salazar, Gregory Davidson, Mathew Swinney
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 9 | September 2024 | Pages 1549-1566
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2277028
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Department of Energy is funding research into studying the consequences of postclosure criticality on the performance of a generic repository by (1) identifying the features, events, and processes (FEPs) that need to be considered in such an analysis, (2) developing the tools needed to model the relevant FEPs in a postclosure performance assessment, and (3) conducting analyses both with and without the occurrence of a postclosure criticality and comparing the results. This paper describes progress in this area of research and presents the results to date of analyzing the consequences of a postulated steady-state criticality in a hypothetical saturated shale repository. Preliminary results indicate that postclosure criticality would not affect repository performance.