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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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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.
S. B. Gunst, E. D. McGarry, J. J. Scoville
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 7 | Number 5 | May 1960 | Pages 407-418
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE60-A25738
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Natural uranium dioxide specimens of Shippingport PWR-l blanket-rod geometry are exposed in the Materials Testing Reactor (flux 2 × 1014 n/cm2−sec) and discharged periodically (every three weeks) for measurements in the Reactivity Measurement Facility (RMF). The time-integrated thermal and epithermal fluxes are measured during each exposure cycle, and together with the MTR Daily Power Logs, give the complete exposure history. Measurements in the RMF are used to determine an experimental value for η/η0 (η0 is the preirradiation value) which may be compared with the theoretical η/η0 calculated for the measured exposure history using appropriate neutron-interaction parameters. In the theoretical calculations, the thermal absorption cross section of stable fission products is taken to be 50 barns per fission. Although the experimental and theoretical results are derived completely independently, agreement within 1 % in η/η0 is found for the behavior following all cycles of irradiation comprising exposures from zero to 15,600 Mwd/ton.