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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.
Jeremy Lloyd Conlin, James Paul Holloway
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 169 | Number 2 | October 2011 | Pages 168-177
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE10-72
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces the explicitly restarted Arnoldi's method for calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors in a Monte Carlo criticality calculation. Arnoldi's method is described along with the power method. The power method has been used for decades for Monte Carlo criticality calculations despite the availability of other algorithms with better convergence properties. The Monte Carlo application of the transport-fission operator of the Boltzmann transport equation is defined, and the Monte Carlo implementation of both Arnoldi's method and the power method are described. A brief discussion of eigenvalue and fission source convergence is given. Numerical simulations of one-demensional slab geometries are presented, demonstrating the convergence of both the eigenvalue and fission source (as measured by the Shannon entropy) for both Arnoldi's method and the power method. The results show that Arnoldi's method does not need to discard iterations like the power method because both the eigenvalue and fission source appear to converge immediately, even for problems with high dominance ratios.