Development of on-line reactivity meter for nuclear reactors

Author

Ansari, Saleem A.

Author_Institution

Pakistan Inst. of Nucl. Sci. & Technol., Islamabad, Pakistan

Volume

38

Issue

4

fYear

1991

fDate

8/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

946

Lastpage

952

Abstract

An online reactivity meter which has been developed for continuous monitoring of reactivity in the Pakistan Research Reactor-1 (PARR-1) is described. The theory of the kinetic technique of measuring reactivity, used by the meter, is described. The meter itself consists of hardware and software for online acquisition of neutron flux signals from plant instrumentation channels and high-level Fortran-77 real-time programming for the computation of reactivity by the solution of neuron kinetic equation. The PDP-11/23 plant computer is used to monitor the plant reactor with the time sharing of its regular data logging function. For the PARR-2 reactor the reactivity meter has been implemented with an IBM PC/AT personal computer. The response of both reactivity meters is fast enough to monitor safety-related reactivity and power excursions in the two reactors. The results of various reactivity measurements are described. The proper choice and location of nuclear detectors and system calibration are discussed

Keywords

computerised instrumentation; fission reactor core control and monitoring; fission reactor instrumentation; fission research reactors; nuclear engineering computing; Fortran-77 real-time programming; IBM PC/AT personal computer; PARR-1; PARR-2 reactor; Pakistan Research Reactor-1; continuous monitoring; kinetic technique; neutron flux signals; nuclear detectors; online acquisition; online reactivity meter; plant instrumentation channels; power excursions; safety-related reactivity; system calibration; Computerized monitoring; Equations; Hardware; Inductors; Kinetic theory; Microcomputers; Neurons; Neutrons; Reactor instrumentation; Time sharing computer systems;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/23.83857

Filename

83857