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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.
Tai-Ping Lung and Lawrence Ruby
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 59 | Number 4 | April 1976 | Pages 436-440
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE76-A26844
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A generalization of Pacilio's method has been developed for utilizing two detectors to investigate reactor noise. The method requires only the measurement of the polarity of the detector output-current as compared with its average value, and therefore is of use in reactor systems with appreciable subcritical power. The modification extends the theory to the case in which the covariance can exceed unity. A unique bivariate negative binomial distribution is proposed for describing the correlated detectors, and a formula for the covariance-to-mean ratio is developed in terms of the polarity correlations between the detectors. From the ratio, the subcritical reactivity of the system can be determined.