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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.
R. H. Szilard, G. C. Pomraning
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 112 | Number 3 | November 1992 | Pages 256-269
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE92-A29073
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A numerical discretization scheme, in both space and time, is considered for the equation of radiative transfer and its corresponding diffusion approximation. Numerical results are presented for radiation penetration into a cold slab driven by a constant incident surface intensity. A comparison of results is made among solutions obtained from the discretization of the radiative transfer equation, a flux-limited diffusion approximation, and the classical diffusion approximation. By numerically studying the properties of the flux-limited diffusion approximation, we conclude that the treatment of the nonlinearities in such a description can significantly affect the results. Different iteration strategies of such nonlinearities are discussed and benchmark data for the converged solution are presented in three different time regimes. Finally, we conclude from this analysis that flux limiting is an important factor in solving these types of problems and must be included in any diffusive description.