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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.
R. N. Hwang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 56 | Number 2 | February 1975 | Pages 119-130
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A26651
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes some general characteristics of the uncertainties in various fast-reactor parameters as a function of the corresponding uncertainties in nuclear data on the basis of statistical theory. By using the variational formalism, it is possible to relate the mean-square deviation of any reactivity coefficient (or reaction-rate ratio) to the covariance matrix of cross sections. The qualitative behavior of the uncertainties in fast-reactor parameters can be best illustrated geometrically in terms of the region of tolerance. The latter is the volume bound by a “hyper-ellipsoid” surface specified by the designer’s tolerance limit, the coefficients characteristic of the type of parameter in the system under consideration, and the correlation matrix. Exploratory studies and graphical illustrations are given for some cases of practical interest.