Comparison of the thermal response of two calorimetric cells dedicated to nuclear heating measurements during calibration

Nuclear heating is a key parameter which contributes to the thermal design and the quality of in-pile experiments performed in Material Testing Reactors (MTRs) for the study of nuclear materials and fuels under irradiation. Nuclear heating is typically measured in MTRs by radiometric calorimeters. However this kind of sensor has to be suited and improved in perspective of the new experimental conditions inside the channels of Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR). In this paper, we study the responses of two non adiabatic differential calorimeter cells having the same geometric design, but different dimensions. These experimental works are carried out during a preliminary out-of-pile calibration operating procedure of these sensors which consists in simulating the sample heating by Joule effect. The influence of the imposed electrical power and of the forced cooling flow is determined on the sensor calibration curves. A more sensitive sensor leads to a quadratic calibration curve. This behavior difference of the two calorimetric configurations is explained by means of temperature and heat flux measurements performed with a new instrumented jacket.