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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. J. Gelinas, R. K. Osborn
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 24 | Number 2 | February 1966 | Pages 184-192
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A18303
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of moment equations is given for a reactor system in which neutron fluctuations are observed by detecting high-energy prompt photons that arise from neutron interactions. Attention is restricted to a one-speed “point-reactor” model in which delayed neutrons and photons are ignored. Expressions for the ratio of the variance to mean of the particles arising from the detection of photons are computed, as well as for the power spectral density of the detection rates. Comparison of these results with the corresponding expressions from conventional neutron-detecting noise analysis shows a striking similarity, and it is suggested that noise analysis by photon detection possesses certain other characteristics that endorse its feasibility in principle.