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.
Glen A. Mortensen and Harold P. Smith, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 22 | Number 3 | July 1965 | Pages 321-327
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A20936
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The time dependent P1 approximation to the neutron transport equation has been solved for the case of an oscillating source on one face of a finite parallelepiped. An oscillatory solution to the differential equations describes the propagation of neutron waves through the medium. Attenuation lengths of plane neutron waves were identical at low frequencies (ω < ½ νΣa) for the P1 and diffusion approximations but differ considerably at high frequencies (ω > 2ν Σtr). Wave lengths and wave speeds for the two approximations were slightly different at low frequencies, identical at immediate frequencies and considerably different at high frequencies. A new method, which considers the transient behavior of a spatially-integrated positive-definite function of flux and current, is used to show that the transient part of the solution decays to zero.