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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.
Andreas Pautz, Adolf Birkhofer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 3 | November 2003 | Pages 320-341
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2386
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We introduce a new coupled neutronics/thermal hydraulics code system for analyzing transients of nuclear power plants and research reactors, based on a neutron transport theory approach. For the neutron kinetics, we have developed the code DORT-TD, a time-dependent extension of the well-known discrete ordinates code DORT. DORT-TD uses a fully implicit time integration scheme and is coupled via a general interface to the thermal hydraulics system code ATHLET, a generally applicable code for the analyses of LWR accident scenarios. Feedback is accounted for by interpolating multigroup cross sections from precalculated libraries, which are generated in advance for user-specified, discrete sets of thermal hydraulic parameters, e.g., fuel and coolant temperature. The coupled code system is applied to the high-flux research reactor FRM-II (Germany). Several design basis accidents are considered, namely the unintended control rod withdrawal, the loss of offsite power, and the loss of the secondary heat sink as well as a hypothetical transient with large reactivity insertion.