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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.
Feroz Ahmed, L. S. Kothari, Ashok Kumar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 46 | Number 2 | November 1971 | Pages 203-213
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A22354
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The dependence of neutron diffusion length on the size and shape of the cross-sectional area of infinitely long rectangular blocks of crystalline moderators (graphite and beryllium) has been studied using an energy-dependent transverse buckling. In conformity with the experimental results in graphite, the diffusion length is found to increase with a decrease in the transverse size of the assembly. It is further found that in assemblies with small transverse dimensions, pseudoequilibrium conditions are established fairly rapidly and reasons for this are discussed. On the other hand, in assemblies with intermediate transverse dimensions (cross-sectional area lying between 70 × 70 cm2 and 50 × 50 cm2 for graphite and between 30 × 30 cm2 and 20 × 20 cm2 for beryllium), even pseudo-equilibrium conditions are not established at very large distances from the source. Dependence of the diffusion length on the shape of the cross-sectional area is also investigated.