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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.
Edward W. Larsen, R. P. Hughes
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 73 | Number 3 | March 1980 | Pages 274-285
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A19851
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A general problem of time-dependent neutron transport in a spatially heterogeneous medium is analyzed by two perturbation methods that have previously been applied to specialized problems. These “buckling” and “asymptotic” methods are shown to be equivalent in the sense that the asymptotic method leads to a time-dependent diffusion equation with constant coefficients, whereas the buckling method leads to the corresponding dispersion law. Two applications, the calculation of keff, and the derivation of a point reactor model are given. Also, the general results obtained here are shown, in several special cases, to reduce to the simpler results obtained previously.