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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.
V. G. Molinari, L. Pollachini
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 91 | Number 4 | December 1985 | Pages 458-469
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE85-A18362
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of equations that describes the diffusion of thermal neutrons is obtained from the energy-dependent Boltzmann equation. These equations are analogous to the phenomenological laws of the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes and show, for instance, that as a temperature gradient produces a neutron current (Soret effect), a density gradient yields an energy flow (Dufour effect). The method is applied to the “two-temperature problem” in order to gain better insight into the thermal diffusion phenomenon. The thermal diffusion of neutrons is shown to strongly depend on the scattering law of the two media where neutrons diffuse, and it is determined that some of the conclusions previously obtained are valid only for the case of a heavy gas moderator with the scattering cross section independent of the energy.