Ak. Nayak et al., Analytical study of nuclear-coupled density-wave instability in a natural circulation pressure tube type boiling water reactor, NUCL ENG DE, 195(1), 2000, pp. 27-44
An analytical model has been developed to study the nuclear-coupled density
-wave instability in the Indian advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) which i
s a natural circulation pressure tube type boiling water reactor. The model
considers a point kinetics model for the neutron dynamics and a lumped par
ameter model for the fuel thermal dynamics along with the conservation equa
tions of mass, momentum and energy and equation of state for the coolant. I
n addition, to study the effect of neutron interactions between different p
arts of the core, the model considers a coupled multipoint kinetics equatio
n in place of simple point kinetics equation. Linear stability theory was a
pplied to reveal the instability of in-phase and out-of-phase modes in the
boiling channels of the AHWR. The results indicate that the stability behav
ior of the reactor is greatly influenced by the void reactivity coefficient
, fuel time constant. radial power distribution and channel inlet orificing
. The delayed neutrons were found to have a strong influence on the Type I
and Type II instabilities observed at low and high channel powers, respecti
vely. Also, it was found that the coupled multipoint kinetics model and the
modal point kinetics model predict the same threshold power for out-of-pha
se instability if the coupling coefficient in the former model is half the
eigen value separation between the fundamental and the first harmonic mode
in the latter model. Decay ratio maps were predicted considering various op
erating parameters of the reactor, which are useful for its design. (C) 200
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