REACTOR NOISE EXPERIMENTS CONSIDERING HIGH FREQUENCIES IN THE IPEN/MB-01 REACTOR

Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares Av. Prof. Lineu Prestes, 2242 CEP 05508000 São Paulo, SP, Brasil

adsantos@usp.br
diogofs@msn.com

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

Reactor noise experiments at high frequencies (up to 100 kHz) in subcritical configurations have been performed at the IPEN/MB-01 research reactor facility. The core configuration considered a short version of the IPEN/MB-01 core in a 24 × 26 rectangular array of fuel rods. The subcritical configurations considered the control banks totally withdrawn and the moderator poisoned with H₃BO₃. The boron concentrations were: 286.8 ± 10 and 578.6 ± 10 ppm. The pulses of two ³He detectors in the reflector region were summed and inserted into the IPEN/MB-01 Correlator and the APSD (Auto Power Spectral Density) was inferred through a mathematical model. The analysis reveals that the APSD in this frequency range is best described by a four-mode decay model. According to the two-region two-group (thermal and fast) kinetic model developed in this work, the first two decay modes describe the thermal group and the other two describe the fast group. After a tedious and severe analyses of the least-square fit of the experimental data, it was concluded that the kinetic behavior of the thermal and fast neutrons can be considered uncoupled. The analysis of the experimental data is still in progress and only the thermal group of the case of 286.8 ppm of boron was analyzed and some parameters could be inferred. The most important one so far is the prompt neutron generation time in the core region that could be inferred with a good level of accuracy.