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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.
João Moreira, John C. Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 98 | Number 3 | March 1988 | Pages 244-254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A22325
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Control rod worth measurements through the inverse kinetics equation depend on accurate determination of the amplitude function from detector signals. The modal-local method introduced in a previous study estimates space-time changes in the flux or shape function so that the amplitude function can be determined accurately and efficiently. A simple thermal-hydraulic feedback model is included in the modal-local method for at-power reactivity analysis. The method is tested with two simulated rod worth measurements: a zero-power rod drop experiment and a differential rod worth measurement in a power reactor. The modal-local method reproduces the reactivity obtained with the FX2-TH time-dependent diffusion theory code with an overall accuracy of 1 to 2%, except for simulated detectors located in the immediate vicinity of the rod motion.