The thermal rate constant of the 3D OH ؉ H23 H2O ؉ H reaction was computed by using the flux autocorrelation function, with a time-independent square-integrable basis set. Two modes that actively participate in bond making and bond breaking were treated by using 2D distributed Gaussian functions, and the remaining (nonreactive) modes were treated by using harmonic oscillator functions. The finite-basis eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian were obtained by solving the resulting generalized eigenvalue equation, and the flux autocorrelation function for a dividing surface optimized in reduced-dimensionality calculations was represented in the basis formed by the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian. The rate constant was obtained by integrating the flux autocorrelation function. The choice of the final time to which the integration is carried was determined by a plateau criterion. The potential energy surface was from Wu, Schatz, Lendvay, Fang, and Harding (WSLFH). We also studied the collinear H ؉ H2 reaction by using the Liu-Siegbahn-Truhlar-Horowitz (LSTH) potential energy surface. The calculated thermal rate constant results were compared with reported values on the same surfaces. The success of these calculations demonstrates that time-independent vibrational configuration interaction can be a very convenient way to calculate converged quantum mechanical rate constants, and it opens the possibility of calculating converged rate constants for much larger reactions than have been treated until now.flux autocorrelation ͉ chemical kinetics ͉ dynamics ͉ localized basis functions ͉ many-body problem T he evaluation of the thermal reaction rate constant k(T) from the quantum mechanical flux provides an efficient alternative to the computation of rate constants by means of the scattering matrix. The quantum mechanical formulation of k(T) in terms of flux autocorrelation functions C f (t) was presented by Yamamoto (1) and Miller et al. (2,3), and there have been several applications to calculate thermal rate constants for specific systems. The flux operator can be used to compute the cumulative reaction probability N(E) or the flux autocorrelation function, and either of these functions can be used to compute the thermal rate constant. Various approaches (4-24) involving basis functions, path integrals, and wave packet propagation methods have been used. Recently, Manthe and coworkers (19,22) have calculated the thermal rate constants for the CH 4 ϩ H3CH 3 ϩ H 2 and CH 4 ϩ O3CH 3 ϩ OH reactions by calculating N(E) as a function of energy E by using the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method. Earlier work on triatomic reactions showed that accurate results can be obtained with an approach based on diagonalizing the time-independent Hamiltonian (4, 8, 10). One advantage of this formulation is that the variational principle is used to identify the relevant subspace of the basis set. This approach is appealing in terms of its generality and straightforward extension to larger systems, and it is exte...