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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.
S. Ganesan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 74 | Number 1 | April 1980 | Pages 49-51
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A18946
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is well known that in the unresolved resonance region, cross sections are treated by a statistical formulation and that the nonuniqueness of the mean resonance data set used to represent the cross sections for various fertile and fissile nuclides has an impact on the calculations of the Doppler coefficient and the fission and capture rate distributions of the heavy elements in a fast power reactor. In this Note, the corresponding uncertainty associated with the calculation of the central Doppler worth in the critical assemblies is indicated. Through the choice of the mean resonance data sets, it is possible to vary the self-shielded cross sections to some extent and to vary the temperature derivatives of the self-shielded cross sections by a significant amount so as to improve the agreement between experiments and calculations for central Doppler worths. This adjustment can be performed without significantly altering the infinite dilution cross sections that are recommended in the unresolved resonance region. This approach is illustrated with sample calculations performed for the central 235U Doppler worth in the ZPR-6-7 assembly.