A Study of Gamma Heating, Neutron Flux, and Gamma Flux Under Several Reactor Core Conditions in the McMaster Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

Changes in the thermal power of a nuclear research reactor will lead to changes in experimental, irradiation, and testing conditions. Consequently, reactor core parameters are inevitably susceptible to changes. One such parameter is gamma heating (GH), which results from gamma interaction with materials. In this work, a gamma thermometer was used to measure GH over the course of 7 operational days and nights. In addition, the Monte Carlo reactor physics code Serpent-2 was used to evaluate the sensitivity of common detection methods for monitoring reactor core parameters such as neutron fluxes, GH, and gamma flux under the following conditions: reactor core power variation, reactor core fuel shuffling, and detector vicinity fuel assembly shuffling. The GH values obtained through measurements and calculations were linearly proportional to the reactor power. In addition, the Serpent-2 code for the McMaster nuclear reactor showed that despite maintaining the reactor power core at the same level, the fuel burnup distribution could alter the studied parameters.

Keywords:

• Gamma heating
• gamma thermometer
• neutron flux
• gamma flux

Acknowledgments

The first author wishes to express his gratitude to all the technical staff and management team members of the MNR for their help during the experiments. He also thanks Simon Day for his help and Jay Grigg-Tait for always being there to answer any technical questions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).