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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.
Hugh K. Clark
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 3 | November 1964 | Pages 307-313
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A19574
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Calculations of the critical sizes of cubic arrays of interacting fissionable units are compared with critical experiments. The units are of two types: vessels containing 5 liters of an aqueous solution of highly enriched uranium, and cylinders of highly enriched uranium metal. The arrays are surrounded by various thicknesses of hydrogenous reflectors. Agreement between calculation and experiment is reasonably good. The similarity of the results obtained with the widely differing types of units invites confidence in general applications of the method of calculation. Tables are presented for computing critical and safe sizes of cubic arrays of 8, 27, 64, or 125 identical units as a function of the albedo of the reflector surrounding the array and of the reactivity of an individual unit.