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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. C. Hopkins, B. C. Diven
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 2 | February 1962 | Pages 169-177
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ratio of neutron capture to fission cross sections, α, has been measured for U233, U235, and Pu239 at 9 incident neutron energies from 30 kev to 1000 kev. A pulsed and collimated neutron beam is passed through a target placed at the center of a large, cadmium-loaded, liquid scintillator. Capture and fission events are detected by means of their prompt gamma rays; elastic and inelastic scattering events are discarded because of their smaller pulse height. Fission is identified by the delayed pulses produced by capture in the scintillator of the fission neutrons. Corrections are applied for the fission events not followed by delayed neutron pulses and for the effect of background counts. This procedure yields values of 1 + α to an accuracy of 1 or 2%.