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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.
B. R. Merk, D. G. Cacuci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 151 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 184-193
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2539
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The derivation of a closed-form expression is presented for a three-timescale approximation of the point-kinetics equations with two effective groups of delayed neutrons. The results produced by this three-scale approximation are shown to be practically as accurate as the numerical results produced by the Kaganove-type algorithms used in production codes, yet at significantly less cost in computational time and resources. Potential uses of this approximation for increasing the efficiency of production codes for computing the space-time distribution of neutrons in reactors are also indicated.