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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.
K. W. Burn
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 125 | Number 2 | February 1997 | Pages 128-170
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE97-A24262
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A weight-dependent capability is inserted into the direct statistical approach (DSA) to optimize splitting and Russian roulette (RR) parameters in Monte Carlo particle transport calculations. In the new model, splitting or RR is carried out on a progenitor arriving at a surface in such a way that the weight of the progeny is fixed (for the particular surface). Thus, the model is named the DSA weight tine model. In the presence of weight-dependent games, all components of the second moment, and the time, are not separable. In the absence of weight-dependent games, the component of the second moment describing the weight-dependent splitting or RR is still not separable. Two approximations are examined to render this component separable under these circumstances. One of these approximations, named the noninteger approximation, looks promising. The new DSA model with the noninteger approximation is tested on four sample problems. Comparisons with the previous weight-independent DSA model and with the MCNP (version 4a) weight window generator are made.