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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.
Jorge Molina Avila, Maria Do Carmo Lopes
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 96 | Number 4 | August 1987 | Pages 310-317
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A16394
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A previously developed formalism is applied to calculate the sensitivity of cobalt prompt response self-powered neutron detectors. Differential and average sensitivities in thermal and epithermal energy regions are calculated, and their dependence on the geometrical factors is studied. A simple analytical expression is proposed for the first-collision absorption probability, which is a good approximation to the exact function. This expression is used to obtain the epithermal selfshielding factor as a function of the radius of the emitter and the parameters of the interaction. The thermal sensitivity, as the main contributor to the current, is studied as a function of the emitter radius. Finally, a criterion to evaluate the accuracy of the parameters of the model is established in the form of some interval rule. This interval rule should encourage the performance of better measurements and calculations.