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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.
Renato Yoichi Ribeiro Kuramoto, Adimir dos Santos, Rogario Jerez, Ricardo Diniz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 158 | Number 3 | March 2008 | Pages 272-283
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-120
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method for absolute measurement of the effective delayed neutron fraction eff based on Rossi- experiments and the two-region model was developed at the IPEN/MB-01 Research Reactor facility. In contrast with other techniques such as the slope method, the Nelson-number method, and the 252Cf-source method, the main advantage of this new methodology is to obtain the effective delayed neutron parameters in a purely experimental way, eliminating all parameters that are difficult to measure or calculate. In this way, Rossi- experiments for validation of this method were performed at the IPEN/MB-01 facility, and with the use of the present approach, eff was measured with a 1.46% uncertainty. In addition, the prompt neutron generation time and other parameters were also obtained in an absolute experimental way. In general, the final results agree well with values from frequency analysis experiments. Comparison of theory and experiment reveals that JENDL-3.3 shows deviation for eff lower than 1%, which meets the desired accuracy for the theoretical determination of this parameter. This work supports the reduction of the 235U thermal yield, as proposed by Okajima and Sakurai.