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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.
C. H. Lee, Y. J. Kim, J. W. Song, C. O. Park
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 124 | Number 1 | September 1996 | Pages 160-166
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24231
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The spectral history problem encountered in reconstructing local homogeneous power distributions is investigated. Because of difficulties in most nodal codes concerning spectral interactions between neighboring assemblies when rebuilding the local power distribution, nodal codes assume a constant spectrum or do not properly consider local spectrum variations within an assembly. A simple, fuel-type-independent method is presented to eliminate the spectrum-induced errors from local homogeneous powers within an assembly over the entire burnup range. The method, which is generalized for its application to any fuel type in the entire assembly burnup domain, uses the proportional relationship between macroscopic cross sections and average spectral history indices. Verification results through embedded calculations and an actual core calculation show that local homogeneous power errors are reduced to the same magnitude as flux errors. The error reduction is conspicuous in the cases of mixed-oxide and highly poisoned fuel assemblies.