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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.
J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 5 | Number 4 | April 1959 | Pages 207-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE59-A25585
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple analytic formula is derived for the values of the prompt neutron density, the delayed neutron emitter densities, and the period in a reactor at the instant it has becòme prompt critical under the assumption that it has been brought to a prompt critical state from an arbitrary subprompt critical initial state by introducing reactivity at the constant rate of a dollars per second. For a fixed value of a, these formulas are asymptotic with respect to small values of the dimensionless parameter al/β, in which l is the mean lifetime of a neutron in the reactor and β is the fraction of fission neutrons which are delayed. For fast reactors, the quantity l/β is generally small, so that our formulas should be useful in estimating the power rise at prompt critical unless the rate of introduction of reactivity is quite large.