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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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The progress so far: An update on the Reactor Pilot Program
It has been about three months since the Department of Energy named 10 companies for its new Reactor Pilot Program, which maps out how the DOE would meet the goal announced by executive order in May of having three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026.
M. H. Kalos
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 16 | Number 1 | May 1963 | Pages 111-117
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE63-A26481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In estimating flux at a point in a Monte Carlo calculation one estimator uses the uncollided flux at a detector from each sampled collision point. This method is shown to have infinite variance. The average value converges to the expected value but the error decreases asymptotically as the inverse cube root of the number of histories. By using the once collided flux and by proper choice of the intermediate collision point the variance may be made finite. Results of numerical experiments show the finite variance methods to be preferable.