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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.
David B. Reister, Paul L. Chambré
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 48 | Number 2 | June 1972 | Pages 211-218
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22472
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Current approximation methods for space-time reactor problems with temperature feedback lack an error estimate. The method discussed in this paper yields an approximate solution with an error estimate. Upper and lower bounds are sought for the flux and temperature at all points in a reactor for all time. The bounds are the solutions of a set of ordinary differential equations which are similar to the point model equations. Having chosen an unusual nonlinear form for the bounds, a comparison theorem of the Nagumo-Westphal type is used to derive the equation which the bound must satisfy. Optimum control theory and Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle determine the optimum bounds.In an example, bounds are determined for three standard nonlinear reactor models. The bounds are narrow and lead to interesting conjectures about the exact solution.