THEORY OF THE NEUTRON-AMPLIFIER REACTOR
The so-called neutron amplifier'' principle, in which two or more subcritical regions are permitted to interact through a rectifying'' neutron valve of moderator and thermal poison, has been proposed as a means of exciting a large subcritical power-generating region with a small, easily controlled source. An idealized system embodying this principle is investigated using a perturbation approach in two-group diffusion theory. This approach makes possible the evaluation of performance characteristics of the assembly in terms of the separate components. The salient features emerging from the analysis appear to be as follows: (A) The transmission of the rectifier in the backward sense cannot be neglected; its effect is an increase in the control requirements of the source region, (The gain per stage'' in a multi-stage amplifier is limited by the ratio of forward-to-backward transmission.) (B) Owing to the large moderator thickness required to attain a high forward-to-backward transmission ratio, the transmission in the forward sense is rather small. This condition is augmented by the intrinsically poor coupling of the transmitted neutrons to the fundamental mcde of the power region. Consequently, the power region must be operated quite close to critical if it is to generate more power than the source region, and the power split (or gain) is sensitive to small changes in reactivity of the power region. Analytical and numerical results are presented. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- Knolls Atomic Power Lab. (KAPL), Niskayuna, NY (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31-109-ENG-52
- NSA Number:
- NSA-12-004449
- OSTI ID:
- 4312852
- Report Number(s):
- KAPL-M-JS-2
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Orig. Receipt Date: 31-DEC-58
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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