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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.
H. Omar Wooten, Donald J. Dudziak, Nolan E. Hertel, Drew E. Kornreich, Adam C. Davis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 159 | Number 3 | July 2008 | Pages 296-310
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-42
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study investigates purely angular effects on photon buildup factors for slabs with optical thickness up to 10 mean free paths. Photon buildup factors are determined for different slabs, upon which monoenergetic photons between 50 keV and 10 MeV are incident at angles between 0 and 1.48 radians. As the incident angle is increased, the physical slab thickness is reduced to maintain a constant slant-path optical thickness relative to incident photons. This method identifies previously unexplored angular relationships between slab thickness and incident angle. Coupled electron/photon cross sections are used to account for secondary photon effects of bremsstrahlung and electron binding energies. The discrete ordinates code PARTISN is used to determine angular photon buildup factors for ten incident energies and ten incident angles for lead, iron, aluminum, and water slabs. Portions of these results are applicable to other slab geometry buildup studies.