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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.
W. K. Foell, T. J. Connolly
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1966 | Pages 399-417
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A17363
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of resonance absorption of neutrons were performed on single-absorber systems containing 238U and 232Th individually, and in binary systems containing mixtures of these two absorbers. The single-absorber measurements were made over a wide range of absorber concentrations and served as a check on the adequacy of resonance absorber calculations and/or resonance parameter data. The binary systems provided a situation in which the spacing of resonances is closer than in a single absorber, thus making questionable the usual assumption of separability of resonances. The measurements were performed by means of static reactivity techniques in the Advanced Reactivity Measurement Facility (ARMF-II) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. The calculated and measured values for the uranium dioxide systems are in good agreement over the wide range of absorber concentrations. The experimental results for the thorium dioxide samples are consistent with work by other experimenters but are in quantitative disagreement with resonance integrals calculated from a recent compilation of resonance parameters. The measured resonance integrals of the binary mixtures were smaller than the values predicted from the measurements on the single-absorber systems, indicating an interference effect of approximately 3% in the samples of highest absorber concentration. Calculations performed with a multiresonance version of Nordheim's ZUT code underestimated this interference effect between absorbers.