The current trend in neutron-aided scientific research presupposes the development of new high-intensity pulsed sources. One variant of such an installation could be a pulsed reactor with a fissile-isotope core – 237Np. The present work is devoted to a study of the dynamics of power pulses of a neptunium reactor taking account of fast temperature feedback during pulse buildup. The problem is reduced to a simple model of a single frequency oscillator combined with the equation of single point kinetics of a reactor neglecting delayed neutrons. It is shown that on the basis of such an approximation, owing to feedback on the temperature of a fuel element the estimated energy of accidental power pulses decreases by almost a factor of 10 compared with a calculation neglecting fast feedback.
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Translated from Atomnaya Énergiya, Vol. 124, No. 4, pp. 194–197, April, 2018.
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Shabalin, E.P., Rzyanin, M.V. Dynamics of Power Pulses in a Research Reactor with Neptunium Nuclear Fuel. At Energy 124, 227–231 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10512-018-0402-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10512-018-0402-9