Measurements of miniature ionization chamber currents in the JSI TRIGA Mark II reactor demonstrate the importance of the delayed contribution to the photon field in nuclear reactors - CEA - Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment Année : 2015

Measurements of miniature ionization chamber currents in the JSI TRIGA Mark II reactor demonstrate the importance of the delayed contribution to the photon field in nuclear reactors

Résumé

The characterization of experimental locations of a research nuclear reactor implies the determination of neutron and photon flux levels within, with the best achievable accuracy. This study focuses on the photon flux problematic. In nuclear reactors, photon fluxes are commonly calculated by Monte Carlo simulations but rarely measured on-line. In this context, experiments were conducted with a miniature gas ionization chamber (MIC) based on miniature fission chamber mechanical parts, recently developed by the CEA (French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission) irradiated in the core of the Jožef Stefan Institute TRIGA Mark II reactor in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The aim of the study was to compare the measured MIC currents with calculated currents based on simulations with the MCNP6 code. A discrepancy of around 50 per cent was observed between the measured and the calculated currents; in the latter taking into consideration only the prompt photon field. Further experimental measurements of MIC currents following reactor SCRAMs (reactor shutdown with rapid insertions of control rods) provides evidence that over 30 per cent of the total measured signal is due to the delayed photon field, originating from fission and activation products, which are untreated in the calculations. In the comparison between the measured and calculated values, these findings imply an overall discrepancy of less than 20 per cent of the total signal which is still unexplained.
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cea-02384610 , version 1 (28-11-2019)

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Vladimir Radulović, Damien Fourmentel, Loïc Barbot, Jean-Francois Villard, Tanja Kaiba, et al.. Measurements of miniature ionization chamber currents in the JSI TRIGA Mark II reactor demonstrate the importance of the delayed contribution to the photon field in nuclear reactors. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 2015, 804, pp.149-154. ⟨10.1016/j.nima.2015.09.015⟩. ⟨cea-02384610⟩
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