Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Reactivity estimation and validation for the control of reactor neutronic power. Master's thesis

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6022219
From July 1986 to July 1991, a joint MIT-SNL research team developed a controller capable of safely raising reactor power by approximately five orders of magnitude in a few seconds. This controller was experimentally demonstrated on the MIT Research Reactor (MITR-II) as well as on the 'Sandia National Laboratories' Annular Core Research Reactor (ACRR). This controller's intended application is for the control of spacecraft nuclear reactors. However, it also has direct application for the control of military, commercial, and research reactors. This report is concerned with a method for enhancing the controller's performance through the development of an improved model to validate estimates of the magnitude of reactivity feedback effects. The focus is on the Doppler effect but the resulting model is applicable to other types of reactivity feedback such as that associated with the thermal effects of a hydrogen coolant.
Research Organization:
Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Electrical Engineering
OSTI ID:
6022219
Report Number(s):
AD-A-268704/4/XAB; CNN: N00123-89-G-0580
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English