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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.
Leib Finkelstein
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 32 | Number 2 | May 1968 | Pages 241-248
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A19736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A complete inverse mass expansion is derived for the difference-differential equation describing neutron moderation in infinite homogeneous media, far energetically from the sources. We consider slowing down equations with different values of the nucleus-to-neutron mass ratio, and a common value of the capture-to-scattering cross-section ratio. The latter is assumed to be an analytic function of lethargy. A preliminary analysis suggests the functional form of the leading term of the expansion. Further treatment leads to a first-order, linear, inhomogeneous, ordinary differential equation satisfied by the expansion terms. Different terms of the expansion correspond to different free terms of the differential equation. Imposing a normalization condition, the solution of the differential equation is made unique, and a formal, practically effective solution to the general asymptotic moderation problem is obtained.