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.
Andreas Pautz, Adolf Birkhofer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 3 | November 2003 | Pages 299-319
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2385
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new neutron transport code for time-dependent analyses of nuclear systems has been developed. The code DORT-TD is based on the well-known Discrete Ordinates code DORT, which solves the steady-state neutron transport equation in two dimensions for an arbitrary number of energy groups and standard regular geometries. For the implementation of time-dependence, a fully implicit, unconditionally stable time integration scheme was employed to minimize errors due to temporal discretization. This requires several modifications to the transport equation and the extensive use of sophisticated acceleration mechanisms. The convergence criteria for fluxes and fission densities had to be strongly tightened to ensure the reliability of results. We also allowed for cross sections varying with time to couple neutronics and thermal hydraulics calculations. The neutronics code was finally applied to a research reactor to show its capabilities for both slow and fast transients.