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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.
A. Dubi, Y. S. Horowitz, H. Rief
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 71 | Number 1 | July 1979 | Pages 29-45
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A20327
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mathematical validity of the track rotation estimator (TRE) as an unbiased point flux estimator is presented in detail. The mathematical formulation of the TRE is developed for the cases of spherical symmetry, spherically symmetrical media with nonisotropic source, and nonsymmetrical media. Various methods for biasing the angular distribution to obtain a bounded variance are developed. The results of calculations in which the TRE is applied to test problems—infinite media, sphere, and sphere with nonisotropic source—as well as a three-dimensional finite slab with point source are presented and compared with the uncollided flux (UCF) and the once-collided flux (OCF) estimators. The results indicate substantially superior quality factors for the TRE over the UCF and the OCF estimators, especially when the absorption cross section is small.