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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.
Richard A. Hendrickson, Glenn Murphy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 31 | Number 2 | February 1968 | Pages 215-221
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A18233
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method is developed to determine the ratio of the reactivity coupling coefficient to the mean generation time in a two-slab reactor based on experimental measurements of the inherent reactor-noise spectrum. A matrix formulation of the cross-spectral density function of the fluctuating neutron density at two experimental access locations adjacent to the cores is used in conjunction with a two-point reactor model to show that the real part of the cross-spectral density vanishes at a particular frequency, termed the sink frequency. The sink frequency is a function of the ratio of the reactivity coupling coefficient to generation time in the cores and the times required for neutron disturbances to travel between the cores and the detector locations. Experimental results from the UTR-10 reactor verify the predicted behavior of the cross-spectral density function in the neighborhood of the sink frequency and provide an at-critical measurement of the reactivity coupling coefficient.