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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. Ueki, M. Inoue, Y. Maki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 84 | Number 3 | July 1983 | Pages 271-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A17795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral shielding experiments of spent-fuel shipping casks were carried out with a californium source. The measurements of dose rates were performed not only with a cask as designed but also with one having lost its resin shield. The measured neutron and secondary gamma-ray dose rates are compared with the results of Monte Carlo calculations using the next-event surface crossing (NESX) estimation and the usual point detector estimation. Overall, the Monte Carlo-NESX calculation method was found to give better results. The calculated neutron doses from the undamaged cask were in close agreement with the measured values; the agreement was also good in the case of the damaged cask in the radial and axial directions. In particular, the agreement was quite satisfactory at distances up to 100 cm from the cask surface, although the calculated dose rates were a little smaller than the measured values at locations beyond the cask. Nevertheless, the values agreed with the measured ones within a factor of 2. Furthermore, the calculated secondary gamma-ray dose rates using NESX corresponded closely to the measured values for the undamaged cask. With the present knowledge of Monte Carlo techniques, the method could be employed as an effective means of analyzing the radiation shielding of a cask. In addition, the present experimental data can be adopted as a benchmark for cask design.