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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.
Matthias Frankl, Rafael Macián-Juan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 183 | Number 1 | May 2016 | Pages 135-142
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE15-47
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In radiation transport simulations, photonuclear processes still represent a rather new feature and are not as well established as neutron, electron, or other photon interactions. This study provides a benchmark for the photoneutron yields in C, Al, Cu, Ta, Pb, and U targets using the most current photonuclear cross-section library ENDF7U and the transport code MCNPX, v. 2.7. The isotopic material descriptions of C and Cu could be improved as more isotopes are available with the new library. The results were compared to experimental data provided by Barber and George [Phys. Rev., 116, 1551 (1959)]. In general, a good agreement can be observed although there seems to be a systematic underestimation in the calculated neutron yields.