Yasunori Kitamura

Experimental investigation of variance-to-mean formula for periodic and pulsed neutron source

Abstract A series of experiments was carried out by using the Kyoto University Critical Assembly and a pulsed neutron generator attached. The experiments were intended to investigate a variance-to-mean technique for measuring the prompt neutron decay constant α of the subcritical reactor system that was driven by the periodic and pulsed neutron source. As the results, it was confirmed that the α value measured by the present technique agreed with a reference value evaluated by the pulsed neutron technique. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the present technique was available to measure the α value even when the product of α and the repetition period of pulsed neutrons was smaller than unity. Since measurement of α by the pulsed neutron technique is generally difficult under such conditions, it was concluded that the present technique was convenient for measuring the α value.

Convergence Improvement of Coarse Mesh Rebalance Method for Neutron Transport Calculations

The coarse mesh rebalance (CMR) is a simple acceleration method that is commonly used for transport calculations though it is conditionally stable, i.e. acceleration failed under certain calculation conditions. In this paper, a new acceleration scheme, i.e. the generalized coarse mesh rebalance (GCMR) method, is proposed and applied to improve convergence property of the CMR method. Definitions of partial neutron currents used in CMR are modified in the present method and convergence property of CMR is improved by the modifications. The proposed method was applied to transport calculations in slab and light water reactor assembly geometries. The calculation results were compared with those by the CMR and the coarse mesh finite-difference (CMFD) acceleration methods, and it was revealed that the present method significantly improves the convergence property of the traditional CMR method. Since the present method can be easily applied to existing transport codes using the CMR method, it is considered as a practical acceleration method.

Reactor Noise Experiments by Using Acquisition System for Time Series Data of Pulse Train

An acquisition system for the time series data of a pulse train was developed to perform the reactor noise experiments. Using this acquisition system, some important reactor kinetic parameters can be obtained by using various data analysis methods for the reactor noise experiments, which facilitates to achieve new experimental knowledge about characteristics of them proposed so far through direct comparison among the results of various methods. In the present study, the prompt neutron decay constant αpat two near delayed critical states of a core constructed in the Kyoto University Critical Assembly were measured by four well-known data analysis methods; the Feynman-α, the Rossi-α (Type-I and Type-II) and the frequency analysis methods. The results showed that ap values measured by the Type-I Rossi-α and the frequency analysis methods agreed with those by the Feynman-α method considering both effects of the delayed neutrons and the counting loss of neutron counter, whereas it was impossible to obtain the ...

General formulae for the Feynman-α method with the bunching technique

Abstract Recently, the bunching technique has been widely utilized in the Feynman-α experiment using a multi-channel scaler (MCS) to measure the prompt neutron decay constant α p . Although the bunching technique enables us to perform efficient experiments, it was pointed out that an inherent count-loss process arises due to the channel advance time Δ between adjacent MCS channels. Through derivation of a Feynman-α variance-to-mean formula containing Δ by means of the multi-gate Pal-Bell equation, Yamane and Hayashi ([Yamane, Y. & Hayashi, Y. 1995]. Annals of Nuclear Energy, 22(8), 533) indicated that this count-loss process does not play any important roles when the channel advance time is much smaller than the dwell time T. However, the Δ / T ratio often becomes large in thermal systems at deep-subcritical states or fast ones, because the dwell time should be chosen to be much smaller than reciprocals of α p values for such systems. On the other hand, since the ratio of the dead time d of neutron detectors to the dwell time becomes also large when the Δ / T ratio is not small, the count-loss process due to the dead time cannot be neglected. Therefore, Feynman-α variance-to-mean and covariance-to-mean formulae containing both Δ and d were derived by means of the compound detection probabilities. Based on the covariance-to-mean formula, a new experimental technique was developed and examined at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly. The result of the examination indicated that one can measure exact α p values when Δ / T ratios are known, even though Δ / T and d / T ratios are not small.

Derivation of variance-to-mean formula for periodic and pulsed neutron source

Abstract Derivation of a variance-to-mean formula was performed to obtain the prompt neutron decay constant α of the subcritical reactor system that is driven by the periodic and pulsed neutron source. The formula was derived for an experimental technique where the Y value is measured by choosing an injection of pulsed neutrons as the origin of the counting gate. By using the derived formula, it was indicated that the α value can be easily determined. From this fact, it was concluded that the present formula was useful to measure the α value for future experiments with the accelerator driven system.

Application of variance-to-mean technique to subcriticality monitoring for accelerator-driven subcritical reactor

To investigate the applicability of the Feynman- (or variance-to-mean) and Rossi-α techniques to subcriticality monitoring of the future accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR), a series of experiments was performed at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA). To simulate the pulse mode operation of the ADSR, a D-T pulsed neutron generator was employed. As a result, it was observed that the α-values measured by these techniques clearly depended on the subcriticality, ranging from

Improvement of the SPH Method for Pin-by-Pin Core Calculations

0.65 to

Applicability of the Diffusion and Simplified P3 Theories for Pin-by-Pin Geometry of BWR

2.72. Furthermore, through measurements in transient states that were realised by operating control rods, it was found that one can detect subcriticality changes in quasi-real-time.

Simplified Treatments of Anisotropic Scattering in LWR Core Calculations

In this paper, improvement of the SPH method (the improved SPH method) is proposed. The SPH method is commonly used in pin-by-pin mesh core calculations to reduce cell-homogenization error. The investigation revealed that the normalization condition of the SPH factor in the conventional SPH method is not appropriate for multi-assembly calculations in which different assembly types are adjacent. Since the conventional normalization condition does not incorporate flux discontinuity between assemblies, cell homogenization error in assembly peripheral region becomes larger. In the improved SPH method, the SPH factor is divided by an averaged “cell-level” discontinuity factor obtained in each fuel assembly. Though the SPH factor is somewhat modified from the conventional value, no additional homogenization parameters (e.g. discontinuity factor) is necessary in core calculations. Test calculations were carried out in a simplified one-dimensional slab and two-dimensional PWR colorset geometries that simulate part of actual core geometry. The calculation results showed that the improved SPH method effectively reduce the cell-level homogenization error especially in assembly peripheral region. Since we can easily implement the improved SPH method by slight code modifications, it can be a promising candidate of the cell-homogenization method for pin-by-pin core calculations.

Simultaneous Loading Patterns Optimization for Two Successive Cycles of Pressurized Water Reactors

The pin-by-pin fine-mesh core calculation method is considered as a candidate next-generation core calculation method for BWR. In this study, the diffusion and simplified P3 (SP3) theories are applied to the BWR pin-by-pin fine-mesh calculation. The performances of the diffusion and SP3 theories for cell-homogeneous pin-by-pin fine-mesh calculation for BWR are evaluated through comparison with a cell-heterogeneous detailed transport calculation by the method of characteristics (MOC). Two-dimensional, 2 × 2 multi-assemblies geometry is used to compare the prediction accuracies of the diffusion and SP3 theories. The 2 × 2 multi-assemblies geometry consists of 9 × 9 UO2 fuel assemblies that have two different enrichment splittings. To minimize the cell-homogenization error, the SPH method is applied for the pin-by-pin fine-mesh calculation. The SPH method is a technique that reproduces a result of heterogeneous calculation using that of homogeneous calculation. The calculation results indicated that the diffusion theory shows a discrepancy larger than that of the SP3 theory on the pin-wise fission rate distribution. In contrast to the diffusion theory, the SP3 theory shows a much better accuracy on the pin-wise fission rate distribution. The computation time using the SP3 theory is about 1.5 times longer than that using the diffusion theory. The BWR core analysis consists of various calculations, e.g., the cross section interpolation, neutron flux calculation, thermal hydraulic calculation, and burn-up calculation. The function of the calculation time for the neutron flux calculation is usually less than half in the typical BWR core analysis. Therefore, the difference in the calculation time between the diffusion and SP3 theories would have no significant impact on the calculation time of the BWR core analysis. For these reasons, the SP3 theory is more suitable than the diffusion theory and is expected to have sufficient accuracy for the 2 × 2 multi-assemblies geometry used in this study, which simulates a typical situation of the actual BWR core.