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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.
Pramila Mohan, Rajesh Mohan, Feroz Ahmed, L. S. Kothari, Hiroyuki Kadotani
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 94 | Number 1 | September 1986 | Pages 87-93
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A17121
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The multigroup space eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of a one-dimensional steady-state diffusion theory operator have been used to study the spatial behavior of a fast neutron field in certain thorium systems. The nuclear data used are from the 26-group ABBN data set. It has been shown that for a fast thorium system, unlike a fast uranium system, all the space eigenvalues lie in the continuum and no discrete space eigenvalue exists. A fast thorium system behaves more like a fast nonmultiplying system. The spectra shifts continuously to lower energies as one moves away from the source; however, pseudoasymptotic conditions are established in certain distance ranges. In order to test the validity of the diffusion theory and eigenfunction expansion method, results have also been obtained using transport theory. In all cases the two sets of results are in reasonably good agreement. To see the effect of geometry, the spectra at certain distances inside a 1-m-thick thorium slab are compared with the corresponding spectra inside a thorium sphere of 1-m radius. At all distances the normalized slab and sphere spectra are nearly the same.