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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.
M. Salvatores, M. Carta, R. Soule
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 100 | Number 1 | September 1988 | Pages 1-15
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A29009
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Heterogeneity effects are compared in a power reactor subassembly of the Superphénix type and in the lattices of the critical experiments performed in the Masurca critical facility. Both the fuel pin heterogeneity and the structure tube heterogeneity are evaluated with a two-step method based on the subgroup technique for self-shielding effect evaluation and on the Benoist method for streaming effect evaluation (the DHARMA method). Besides validation with reference calculations for simple geometries, experimental evidence confirms the good performance of the method proposed. It is found that the components of the heterogeneity effects on keff play a different role in power reactors and critical experiments, and this fact has a significant impact in bias factor assessment or cross-section adjustments based on integral experiments.