Real Time Point Kinetics Simulation for a Transient Reactor on a 16 Bit Microcomputer

The Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) at Argonne National Laboratory is being upgraded to simulate extreme conditions in an LMFBR. This facility will be used to subject test assemblies of fuel bundles to very rapid and intense power transients. This reactor will be capable of generating transients which increase in power from 50 watts to 10 gigawatts in approximately 0.75 seconds. A real time reactor simulation is needed to verify that the reactor control system will produce the expected transient at run time. This paper describes a solution to the reactor point kinetics equations suitable for real time applications and compares the performance of several different processors in this application. The paper also describes an implementation of a real time simulator based on an Intel 8086 processor with an 8087 numeric data processor.