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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.
W. M. Wilson, H. E. Jackson, G. E. Thomas
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 1977 | Pages 55-62
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27004
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The gamma-ray spectrum resulting from neutron capture in the 2.8-keV resonance of 23Na has been measured with the high-resolution annihilation pair spectrometer at the internal-target facility of the CP-5 reactor. The 2.8-keV resonance was populated by using the boron-shielded target technique: A½-in.-thick filter of 10B surrounding the sodium sample selectively removes low-energy neutrons from the spectrum; the 1/E dependence of the incident neutron flux assures a low intensity of high-energy neutrons. Capture, predominantly in the 2.8-keV resonance, is indicated by a 2- to 3-keV shift in the energies of the primary transitions relative to those observed in thermal-neutron capture. The correlation between the absolute intensities of the resonance transitions and the thermal transitions (measured by others) is computed and discussed in terms of a numerical analysis. (The resonance and thermal intensities are identical within the precision of the measurement.) The results indicate that the resonance total radiation width is 0.24 eV Γγ 0.40 eV.