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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.
Richard B. Jones and P. F. Zweifel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 59 | Number 4 | April 1976 | Pages 429-436
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE76-A26843
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Goertzel reactor construct and the Goertzel-Wilkins theorem proved for this class of reactors are applied to a moderator fuel system at pressurized water reactor temperature and pressure conditions. The viability of the minimum critical mass as a global parameter to assess the integrity of energy group structures is investigated. The calculations are performed in diffusion and transport theory and up to eight energy groups are considered. Some initial guidelines based on the minimum critical mass for attaining nearly equivalent accuracy by using a fewer number of “properly” structured energy groups are discussed. Numerical results are still inconclusive but again suggest that transport theoretical calculations are pointless unless spectral codes that compute group constants include angular dependence.