ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
L. Green
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 66 | Number 1 | April 1978 | Pages 127-134
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A15197
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The shape of the thorium absorption cross section near thermal energies was investigated. This shape is dominated by one or more negative energy resonances whose parameters are not directly known but must be inferred from higher energy data. Since the integral quantity most conveniently describing the thermal cross-section shape is the Westcott g-factor, effort was directed toward establishing this quantity to high precision. Three nearly independent g-factor estimates were obtained from measurements on a variety of foils in three different neutron spectra provided by polyethylene-moderated neutrons from a 252Cf source and from irradiations in the National Bureau of Standards “Standard Thermal Neutron Density.” The weighted average of the three measurements was 0.990 ± 0.009. This is in good agreement with two recent evaluations and supports the adequacy of the current cross-section descriptions.