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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.
Sevim Tan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1967 | Pages 436-447
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18403
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A solution of the zero-power kinetic equations for sinusoidal excess reactivity insertions, previously obtained by the author by Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach (WKB), is further discussed. Explicit equations for the reactor period, reactivity bias, and stabilized reactor response, within the range of applicability of the method, are derived. Harmonic contents of the logarithm of flux for both pure and properly biased sinusoidal reactivity variations are analyzed. Fourier components of flux yielding the new steady-state mean power, the fundamental and the second harmonic are given. Results of the treatment are extended to the describing function of a low-power nuclear reactor and the major error involved in the earlier literature is indicated. The procedure, although developed under the assumption of one average group of delayed neutrons, is expected to yield very satisfactory results even if generalized to multigroup treatment.