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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.
J. Devooght
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1966 | Pages 385-392
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A17361
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Rigorous transport relations between mass, critical mass, and arbitrary perturbations are developed for nonuniform reactors. It is shown that reactivity is equal to the difference between the fractional increase of mass and critical mass, multiplied by the fractional destruction rate of total importance by moderator or by leakage. Sufficient conditions for an increase or decrease of critical mass in nonuniform reactors are obtained, and it is shown that burnup always increases the critical mass of thermal reactors.