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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.
K. Shure, J. A. O'Brien, D. M. Rothberg
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 35 | Number 3 | March 1969 | Pages 371-375
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A20016
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Effective removal cross sections for iron and lead that can be applied to fast-neutron dose rate calculations have been determined from calculated spatial-spectral neutron distributions as a function of succeeding polyethylene thickness. These cross sections increase with polyethylene thickness, and for large polyethylene thicknesses, they are in agreement with those derived from experiment. From the spatial-spectral neutron distributions, relative contributions of various neutron energy ranges to the neutron dose rate have been calculated as a function of succeeding polyethylene thickness. For polyethylene thicknesses > 30 cm, fast (E > 302 keV), epithermal (302 keV > E > 0.625 eV), and thermal (E < 0.625 eV) neutrons contribute 83, 6, and 11%, respectively, to the neutron dose rate.