Oscillation experiment design at the VENUS-F fast reactor

¹ SCK CEN Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Boeretang 200, Mol, 2400, Antwerp, Belgium
² Université libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt 50, Brussels, 1050, Belgium

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Published online: 6 November 2025

Abstract

Improvement of nuclear data for fast and epithermal neutron interactions is crucial to the deployment of advanced nuclear reactor technologies. Integral experiments in VENUS-F, the zero-power fast spectrum reactor operated at SCK CEN, can play a major role in addressing this challenge. With this perspective, sample reactivity worth experiments applying the oscillation technique are being implemented in VENUS-F. In this work, we present the design of such experiments and the developed processing tools. This work precedes the analysis of actual oscillation experiments of a test B₄C sample. Firstly, Monte Carlo simulations are performed to calculate the reactivity worth of the sample and its local perturbation effect. Then, synthetic experimental output signals are produced and processed to showcase the analysis procedure. The oscillation parameters are varied to assess their impact on the measurement accuracy and identify the optimal experimental configuration. Moreover, the developed processing routines are validated for the synthetic cases and compared. This work outlines the experiment design process, it demonstrates the reliability of the developed routines, and underlines their limitation under certain oscillation conditions.