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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.
Marc A. Cooper, Edward W. Larsen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 1-13
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-34
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method for efficiently solving global Monte Carlo particle transport problems is presented. (In these problems, flux information is desired across the entire system, not just at a small number of detector locations.) The method is based on the use of a weight window that distributes Monte Carlo particles uniformly throughout the system. This (a) ensures that all subregions of the system are adequately sampled and (b) controls the particle weights, even in subregions far from sources. The weight window is constructed from an approximate deterministic solution of the forward transport problem. It is argued that a weight window based on the forward transport solution is more appropriate for global problems than the more familiar concept of basing a weight window on an adjoint solution for source-detector problems. It is also shown that by using Monte Carlo-generated Eddington factors in deterministic solutions of the quasi-diffusion equation, one can inexpensively compute updated forward-based weight windows and obtain a more efficient global Monte Carlo calculation.