Sharif Digital Repository

In operating nuclear reactor core, fluctuations (deviations from normal operating conditions) are usually produced and propagated. These fluctuations can be due to control rod vibrations, inlet coolant temperature fluctuations, inlet coolant velocity fluctuations and so on. The induced neutron noise can be detected by in-core neutron detectors. Noise source identifications (such as the type, location and propagating velocity) as well as the calculation of the dynamical parameters (such as moderator temperature coefficient in PWRs and Decay Ratio in BWRs) are of the main applications of the neutron noise analysis in power reactors.
Investigating the propagation noise in PWRs (specifically... 

Analysis of neutronic and thermal-hydraulics fluctuations has various applications in calculation or measurement of the core dynamical parameters (temperature reactivity coefficients) furthermore it is applicable in thermal-hydraulics surveillance and diagnostics. Experience of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and the lessons learned from the European stress tests, demonstrated that alternative and various tools and methods are needed for the reactor's condition identification. In this paper the feasibility of development of an alternative accident monitoring via eminent coupling of neutron and thermal-hydraulics noise is proposed. and it is programming a simple simulator for calculating... 

The present M.Sc. thesis consists of two sections including the static calculation and neutron noise calculation in rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The multi-group, two dimensional neutron diffusion equations and corresponding adjoint equations are solved in the static calculation. The spatial discretization of equations is based on Average Current Nodal Expansion Method (ACNEM). Size of nodes is the same size of the fuel assemblies in modeling both of rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The results are benchmarked against the valid results for BIBLIS-2D and IAEA-2D benchmark problems. In the second section, neutron noise calculations are performed for two types of noise sources,... 

Neutron fluctuations in both low and high power reactors provide important information about the system. The origins of these fluctuations are different in both regimes. In low power the branching process is the reason of these fluctuations. But the random nature of technological processes such as boiling in the reactors cooling and mechanical structure vibrating such as control rod and fuel rod created the neutron noise. Mathematical descriptions and applications of neutron noise for each mode are different. In common mode, fluctuations in the neutron detection system, determine some parameters and determin the start abnormality in system. In this study the spatial dependence of the cross... 

The present M.Sc. thesis consists of two sections including static calculation and neutron noise calculations in rectangular and hexagonal geometries. The multi-group, two dimensional neutron diffusion equations and corresponding adjoint equations are solved in the static calculation. The spatial discretization of equation is based on Boundary Element Method (BEM). The result are benchmarked against the valid results for BIBLIS-2D and IAEA -2D benchmark problem. In the second section, neutron noise calculation are performed for two types of noise sources, i.e. absorber of variable strength and Inadvertent Loading and Operation of a Fuel Assembly in an Improper Position (ILOFAIP). The... 

In this thesis, localization of a postulated noise from limited neutron detectors sparsely distributed throughout the core of a typical VVER-1000 reactor is investigated. For this purpose, developing a 2-D neutron noise simulator for hexagonal geometries based on the 2-group diffusion approximation, the reactor dynamic transfer function is calculated. The box-scheme finite difference method is first developed for hexagonal geometries, to be used for spatial discretisation of both 2-D 2-group static and noise diffusion equations. Using the discretised static equations, a 2-D 2-group static simulator (HEXDIF-2) is developed which its results are benchmarked against the well-known CITATION... 

This study consists of two parts: steady state calculations and neutron noise calculations in the frequency domain for two rectangular and hexagonal geometries. In the steady state calculation, the neutron diffusion and its adjoint equations are approximated by two-dimensional coordinates in two-group energy and are solved using the average current nodal expansion method. Then, by considering the node size in the dimensions of a fuel assembly, different orders of flux expansion are investigated. For verification purposes, the calculations have been performed by power iteration method for two test problems of BIBLIS-2D and IAEA-2D. For rectangular geometry with increasing flux expansion order... 

The core behaviour of a nuclear reactor might be fluctuated (deviations from the normal operating conditions) in operating conditions due to various reasons. Control rod vibrations and the alterations of coolant temperature and velocity could be the main reasons for the fluctuations. These fluctuations lead to neutronic flux noise and subsequently power noise. The main objective of the current thesis was to study the thermal-hydraulic noise of the PWRs in two-phase with the emphasis on VVER-1000, which is similar to the Bushehr-1 nuclear reactor. By considering the possibility of existing two-phase flow (maximum allowable quality is about 14%) in hot channel of the PWRs, thermal-hydraulic... 

Neutron noise equations, which are obtained by assuming small perturbations of macroscopic cross sections around a steady-state neutron field and by subsequently taking the Fourier transform in the frequency domain, have been usually solved by analytical techniques or by resorting to diffusion theory, but in this thesis, in order to increase of accuracy of neutron noise calculation, has been used transport approximation for neutron noise calculation and the Monte Carlo method has been used to solve transport equation of the neutron noise in the frequency domain. Since the transport equation of the neutron noise is a complex equation, a new Monte Carlo technique for treating complex-valued... 

The present ph.D. thesis consists of three sections including the static calculation, neutron noise calculation and neutron noise source unfolding in VVER-1000 reactor core. The multi-group, two dimensional neutron diffusion equations and corresponding adjoint equations are solved in the static calculation. The spatial discretization of equations is based on Galerkin Finite Element Method (GFEM) using unstructured triangle elements generated by Gambit software. The static calculation is performed for both linear and quadratic approximations of shape function; baesd on which results are compared. Using power iteration method for the static calculation, the neutron and adjoint fluxes with the...