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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.
G. D. Hickman, W. B. Leng
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 4 | April 1962 | Pages 523-531
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26101
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of effective cutoff energies for 1/v detectors covered by cadmium, samarium, and gadolinium filters is presented. These cutoff energies have been calculated for both isotropic and beam fluxes which were made up of a Maxwellian thermal plus a 1/E tail. Calculations were performed as a function of r (the ratio of thermal flux to the resonance flux per unit lethargy), EM (the Maxwellian neutron energy), and the absorption coefficients of the 1/v foil and the resonance filter. The cutoff energies for samarium were found to be appreciably lower than those for cadmium, while those for gadolinium, especially for thicknesses of 30 to 40 mils, are similar to those of cadmium. It is felt that these rare earth filters might be able to supply valuable information in the region of low cutoff energies, especially in high temperature facilities where cadmium with its low melting point is difficult to use.