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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.
D. Neudecker, R. Capote, D. L. Smith, T. Burr, P. Talou
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 179 | Number 4 | April 2015 | Pages 381-397
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Low evaluated uncertainties compared to experimental information and a strong model impact were observed in some prompt fission neutron spectrum (PFNS) evaluations that include mean values and covariances stemming from a rigid model. Here, we show by studying the 239Pu PFNS ENDF/B-VII.1 evaluation via generalized least-squares analyses that strong model correlations in combination with the normalization condition on the estimated PFNS and its covariances result in surprisingly low evaluated uncertainties. Furthermore, the model changes the evaluated results by >1σ of combined experimental uncertainties near the average outgoing neutron energy (~2 MeV). We show both analytically and by means of representative numerical examples that the normalization condition on the spectrum and its covariances naturally leads to uncertainties reduced by a fully positively correlated scaling uncertainty.