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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.
D. N. Bridges, J. D. Clement
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 47 | Number 4 | April 1972 | Pages 421-434
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22434
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This investigation involved a theoretical and experimental study of space-dependent reactor transfer functions with temperature feedback. The reactor transfer function under investigation was the neutron flux response to an input perturbation or source. An existing theoretical model, known as the complex source method, was extended to include temperature feedback effects and the resultant equations were programmed for a model of the Georgia Tech Research Reactor (GTRR). Spatial transfer function measurements were made in the GTRR using an in-core pile oscillator employing a pseudo-random binary sequence. Several detector locations were investigated for both zero-power and at-power (900 kW) conditions over a frequency range from 4 × 10−4 to 8.5 Hz. Data were taken and stored on magnetic tape using two PDP-8 computers and a magnetic tape unit. The theoretical calculations and the experimental results agreed quite closely. Temperature feedback effects for the GTRR were observed to occur at frequencies of 2 × 10−2 Hz and lower, and to become quite pronounced below 1 × 10−3 Hz. Spatial effects were observed to be significant only for frequencies above 1 Hz. The agreement of the calculations with the experimental results served to validate the theoretical model.