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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.
E. E. Lewis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 25 | Number 4 | August 1966 | Pages 359-364
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A18554
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Dirac chord method is applied to the calculation of the escape probability of heavy charged particles from a uniform isotropic source of arbitrary convex geometry. This leads to the distribution of path lengths traveled by particles before escaping from the source. The path-length distribution, which is a function only of the Dirac chord distribution, may be used to average nuclear characteristics over the source geometry. As an illustration, the standard formula for the neutron-escape probability is reproduced. Expressions are then derived for the spectrum and energy self absorption of heavy-charged-particle sources. Specific results for spherical, slab, and cylindrical sources are obtained with the assumption that the range is proportional to an arbitrary power of the particle energy.