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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.
Constantine P. Tzanos, Elias P. Gyftopoulos, Michael J. Driscoll
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 52 | Number 1 | September 1973 | Pages 84-94
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE73-3
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An iterative optimization method based on linearization and linear programming is developed. The method can be used for the determination of the material distributions in a fast reactor which maximize or minimize integral reactor parameters that are linear functions of the neutron flux and the material volume fractions. The method has been applied to the problems of optimization of the fuel distribution in a reactor of fixed power output, constrained power density, and constrained material volume fractions so as to obtain (a) a maximum initial breeding gain, (b) a minimum critical mass, and (c) a minimum sodium void reactivity. Under this realistic set of constraints, numerical results show that the same fuel distribution yields maximum breeding gain, minimum critical mass, minimum sodium void reactivity, and uniform power density.