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Alert

Due to a lapse in appropriations, the NRC has ceased normal operations. However, excepted and exempted activities necessary to maintain critical health and safety functions—as well as essential progress on designated critical activities, including those specified in Executive Order 14300—will continue, consistent with the OMB-Approved NRC Lapse Plan.

Subcriticality

The condition of a nuclear reactor system, in which nuclear fuel no longer sustains a fission chain reaction (that is, the reaction fails to initiate its own repetition, as it would in a reactor's normal operating condition). A reactor becomes subcritical when its fission events fail to release a sufficient number of neutrons to sustain an ongoing series of reactions, possibly as a result of increased neutron leakage or poisons.

Page Last Reviewed/Updated Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Page Last Reviewed/Updated Tuesday, March 09, 2021