ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Yoshihiro Yamane, Minoru Shinkawa, Kojiro Nishina
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 72 | Number 2 | November 1979 | Pages 244-255
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A19469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For single-core reflected neutronic systems, generalized neutron generation time is derived and given physical interpretations in terms of importance. A system kinetic equation containing the moderator region response function previously introduced is reduced by a slow-variation approximation to the form of a conventional one-point kinetic equation, in which a parameter can be identified as generalized neutron generation time by analogy with a bare system. In such a mathematical expression for the parameter, one can further identify the amount of increase due to reflection over the bare system generation time. This amount is found to be the reflection time multiplied by the number of migrations that neutrons undergo between reflector and core in one generation. The theoretical generation time of the SHE assembly, a thermal-energy, graphite-moderated critical assembly, calculated by such a formulation with cylindrical geometry, agreed well with that from pulsed neutron experiments.