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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.
R. A. Bonalumi, N. P. Kherani
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 90 | Number 1 | May 1985 | Pages 47-59
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE85-A17430
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A unique processing of in-core flux detector data is described and demonstrated, such that the detailed in-core power distribution can be derived with great accuracy by combining a specially “smoothed-out” set of in-core data with neutron diffusion theory. Rational Mapping (RAM) is designed in such a way that erratic detector signals are recognized very efficiently and can be eliminated from the experimental data set: This is achieved by modal expansion of the difference between theoretical fluxes and experimental fluxes at the detector sites. Sensitivity studies have shown that RAM is quite stable, does not absorb the “wild” detector errors in the mapping procedure, and results in mapped fluxes with errors about three times smaller than would be obtained by direct interpolation of detector readings. A new method is described to infer corrections to theoretical core parameters based on the difference between the RAM fluxes and the theoretical fluxes.