ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
P. Reuss
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 92 | Number 2 | February 1986 | Pages 261-266
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A18174
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Because of the large number of heavy nuclide resonances, a detailed neutron flux calculation in the epithermal range cannot be made by standard nuclear reactor codes: It would need several tens of thousands of energy points. However, by using precalculated effective reaction rates, only a few tens of groups are sufficient for accurate spectrum and reaction rate calculations, if a consistent formalism is used. Such a formalism was elaborated in the 1970s by M. Livolant, F. Jeanpierre for the “one resonant nuclide-one resonant zone” problem, and was implemented in the APOLLO code. In practical cases there are several resonant nuclides and often resonant zones of different characteristics, e.g., a lattice constituted with different kinds of pins, a lattice with irregular “water holes,” a fuel element with temperature (therefore Doppler effect) gradients, and so on. Since these problems cannot be correctly treated by APOLLO, a generalization of the formalism was derived. The basic principles were retained, and an algorithm was constructed that would not require too expensive calculations. The Livolant-Jeanpierre theory is briefly summarized, equations for the most general case are presented, some approximations for practical calculations are proposed, and numerical tests on significant examples are discussed.