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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.
N. C. FRANCIS, H. HURWITZ, JR., P. F. ZWEIFEL
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 3 | May 1957 | Pages 253-287
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A25395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The calculation of critical parameters, neutron distributions, and adjoint functions for reflected reactors is discussed. A variational technique and a modification of the Wiener-Hopf method are described. The major application is made for the case of reactors moderated by hydrogen, in which case the slowing-down kernel must be introduced either as a numerical function or as a polynomial fit to such a function. For the case of the polynomial fit, explicit formulas for critical size, neutron distributions, and adjoint functions have been found by the Wiener-Hopf method. A comparison with experimental results for water-moderated reactors shows discrepancies consistent with the discrepancy known to exist between the measured and calculated neutron age in water.