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.
A. J. Buslik
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 35 | Number 3 | March 1969 | Pages 303-318
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A20009
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A self-adjoint positive-definite variational principle is presented which leads to upper and lower bounds for < S*, ϕ >, where < S*, ϕ > is an integral over position and angular direction of the product of the one-velocity neutron transport flux, ϕ and an arbitrary adjoint source, S*. The Euler equation of the functional is a new form of the one-velocity Boltzmann neutron transport equation in which the dependent variable is one-half the sum of ϕ and ϕ*, where ϕ* is the adjoint flux. When a trial function consisting of an expansion in spherical harmonics is used, one obtains as a lower bound for < S*, ϕ > the quantity < US1, ϕ(P−N′; S1) > − < US2, ϕ(P−N″; S2) >, where S1(r, Ω) = [S(r, Ω) + S*(r, −Ω)]/2, S2(r, Ω) = [S(r, Ω) − S*(r, −Ω)]/2, ϕ(P-N′; S1) is an odd P−N approximation to a problem with the same cross sections as the original problem, but with source S1; ϕ(P−N″; S2) is an even P−N approximation to a problem with source S2, and U is the operator that takes a function f(r, Ω) into f(r, −Ω).