Development of Core Diagnostic Methods and their Application at Swedish BWRs and PWRs

Abstract

Some results of the noise diagnostic research, performed at the Department of Reactor Physics of Chalmers University of Technology are presented. This work has been made in co-operation with the Swedish safety authority and the power plants. The subjects discussed in the paper are: (a) Localization of a channel instability in a BWR; (b) Determination of the axial elevation of a control rod with neural networks in a PWR; (c) Diagnostics of core-barrel vibrations in PWRs. New methods were developed or known methods improved in order to handle these cases and the methods were tested through analysis of measurements. This paper gives a review of this work and its results.

KEYWORDS:

• diagnostic techniques
• noise diagnostics
• unfolding
• instability
• localization
• control rods
• neural networks
• core-barrel motion
• beam mode vibrations
• Forsmark-1 reactor
• Ringhals-2,3,4 reactors