ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
J. A. Lake, J. M. Kallfelz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 53 | Number 1 | January 1974 | Pages 27-46
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE74-A23328
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermal-neutron energy spectra have been measured as a function of trans-verse buckling and of space position along the longitudinal axes of 25.4- × 25.4-and 35.6- × 35.6-cm beryllium assemblies by the slow-chopper, time-of-flight technique using the thermal column of the Georgia Tech Research Reactor as the steady-state neutron source. For neutrons moving in the (forward) positive Z direction, we find no evidence of the establishment of, or the tendency toward, discrete asymptotic decay conditions from the strongly space-dependent spectra in either assembly. This is a direct experimental verification of the disappearance of the discrete set of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions in the diffusion-length problem with transverse leakage. These results are in at least qualitative agreement with the transport theory predictions of Williams, but in disagreement with the diffusion theory results of Ahmed, Kothari, and Kumar which predict that a true discrete mode should exist in beryllium assemblies as small as 30 × 30 cm.