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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.
M. N. Moore
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 3 | Number 4 | April 1958 | Pages 387-394
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE58-A25476
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Upon application of the theory of stochastic processes to reactor kinetics, it is possible to show that the square of the modulus of the reactor transfer function is proportional to the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation function for power noise in the reactor. Since the power noise represents the response to the minimum power input signal, measurements of transfer functions based upon reactor noise are of all possible measurements, least subject to nonlinear distortion. By performing the experiment at various power levels and temperatures, it is possible to measure both power and temperature coefficients. If the reactor is periodically monitored during its operation, long term changes can also be measured.