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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.
S. Pearlstein
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 68 | Number 1 | October 1978 | Pages 10-18
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27265
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The probability table method (PTM), used in unresolved resonance region calculations, assumes that cross sections are not energy correlated. Strong cross-section energy auto-correlations are noted for some heavy nuclides that could affect the use of the PTM in the unresolved resonance region or its extension to the resolved resonance region. Uranium-238 has strong cross-section auto-correlations and is considered a severe test material for the PTM. Monte Carlo calculations of capture rates in 238U at 500, 1000, and 2000 eV do not show differences between the PTM and exact methods within an ∼1% calculational uncertainty. These results show that strong auto-correlations do not interfere with the use of the PTM in the resolved and unresolved resonance regions.