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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.
K. V. Subbaiah, A. Natarajan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 96 | Number 4 | August 1987 | Pages 330-342
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A16396
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Transport calculations have been performed using the one-dimensional gamma-ray transport code ASFIT for materials of high atomic number (Z), such as tin, tungsten, lead, and uranium, for incident energies in the range of 0.030 to 0.5 MeV, where the fluorescent X rays are important. The relative impact of different components of K X rays on the spectra and buildup factors at various depths in the medium has been assessed for a typical case. Approximate analytic results are derived and compared with the computed X-ray contributions. Point isotropic air and medium response buildup factors computed for these materials have been given, filling the gap in the existing standard tables. Since the buildup factors are not amenable for conventional interpolation in this region, the values are given at close intervals of incident photon energy.