Okay. Hello. You had a brief introduction yesterday to reactor kinetics, time behavior of nuclear reactors.

But what we saw yesterday was a reactor without reactivity feedback. This is all well and good for a reactor operating at very low power, where small changes in power level do not affect the temperatures of material in the reactor. When a reactor's operating at high power, there's a lot of what we call feedback going on. Here when a small change in power occurs, temperatures of coolant and fuel change. These changes cause reactivity to change. Changes in reactivity cause power to change. This feedback makes reactor kinetics behavior much more complex. So finally we are at the point where we need to introduce reactivity feedback. While we may change the reactivity by moving a control rod, reactiviy also changes during a transient by changes. And the fuel temperature changes in the moderator temperature. And void, steam volume. If reactivity feedback is positive, this means that a increase in power causes a temperature increase, which will cause a reactivity increase even further. And cause the power and temperature to continue to increase. Clearly this is a self-perpetuating situation the reactor designer aims to avoid. It enhnaces the effect that produced it, and if unchecked. Positive feedback will cause a divergent power increase, and the reactor could destroy itself. In summary, with positive feedback, if power and temperature increase, reactivity increases, which causes power and temperature to increase Even furher, not an ideal situation. It's self-perpetuating, and it's on a path to damage the reactor. Positive feedback effects, enhances the effects that produce it and if unchecked, causes a divergent power increase. But if reactivity feedback is negative, this means that a power increase and a temperature increase will cause reactivity to decrease and cause a power and temperature to decrease. Clearly, this is a controlled situation,

it resists the effect that produced it. And if unchecked, positive feedback would cause a divergent power increase, and the reactor could destroy itself. In summary, with negative feedback, the power and temperature increase causes reactivity to decrease Which causes power and temperature to decrease in ideal situations. This causes reactivity to increase to bring the power back to its starting value. It's self-controlling and it resists, it resists the effect that produced. So negative feedback is the desired design condition. It does present some drawbacks though. As the reactor goes from a cold shut down condition to a hot condition, positive reactivity has to be added to overcome the negative reactivity added by reactor heat up from power escalation. Also what if the reactor would suddenly get a large slug of cold water. This could cause a large positive reactivity increase. So protection system design has to take into account, this possibility. Next, I want to define what is meant by reactivity coefficient. And to explain how its used and how it effects a reactor safety. Coefficients of reactivity are represented by the symbol alpha, the coefficient represents the reactivity change for change in the variable, any variable x. Where x can stand for fuel temperature, moderator temperature, void or moderator density. It's t here, but all of those could be x. The reactivity effects from all sources of change in the reactor are additive to make up the total reactivity feedback. So how does the reactor operator control reactivity? She controls reactor operating conditions with control rods. We represent the control rod reactivity by either an integral rod worth curve, or the differential rod worth curve. Integral rod worth represents the total worth of a control rod as it moves from full insertion at the bottom of a reactor to full withdrawal at the top of a reactor. It's measured in units of reactivity. The integral rod worth curve. Has a low slope at the top and bottom of the core because the flux is lowest at

the top and bottom. The flux is highest in the center of the core and that's where the slope of integral rod worth curve is highest. That's where things are changing fastest. But as you can see from the figure, one measures the change in reactivity, delta row I call it, for a change in position delta x. This slope gives us the differential rod worth that we'll see in the next figure. So differential rod worth is a curve denoting reactivity worth a small movement of the rod. It's units are delta row per delta x. A reactivity change per inch of rod movement. If there's a rod worth curve it's simply the slope Of the intrical rod worth curve at every location from the bottom to the core to the top of the core. Now, we use control rods to make adjustments to keep the reactor critical. We also use a bank of rods called the safety rods. To fully insert when we want to trip the reactor in the event of an overpower condition, when we encounter, say an excessively short period, or we find other parameters out of range. Control rod speeds are limited to ensure that we cannot insert reactivity too fast. We'd like to maintain control rods in a position of high neutron importance to ensure immediate response of the reactor to rod in motion. But as we'll see later, we adjust the soluble absorber concentration. To a point where we can keep the control rods at the top of the core so we don't distort the axial power shape by having rods inserted far into the core. Let's move on now to our final objective for the reactor kinetics module. We want to understand the behavior of power, reactivity and temperature during a prompt supercritical excursion. There are experimental reactors called pulsed reactors like the Annular Core Research Reactor a Sandia National Laboratories. Let's take a look at the various phases of a super prompt critical transient. Recall the fact that if the reactivity insertion is greater than Beta, the effected light neutron fraction. The reactor will become prompt super critical. In other words, the reactivity input is

greater than $1. We no longer need delayed neutrons to grow. The resulting transient from the reactivity insertion greater than $1.00 will be arrested by something we call, Prompt Fuel-Temperature Reactivity Feedback. The sequence in the transient we will observe is to first withdraw a rod worth $3.5 in activity. This a-, this is a massive amount of reactivity. And it really will put the reactor on a very steep power increase. The power will increase dramatically, and the fuel temperature will rise because of the deposition of a lot of energy. As the fuel temperature rises, re-activity will fall due to the negative temperature coefficient re-activity. The power increase will slow down. Due to the negative reactivity feedback and eventually the temperature will get high enough that it will cause a feedback reactivity that balances the initial reactivity insertion and the total reactivity will go to zero. The reactor will then shut itself down. Thus demonstrating the inherit safety in a reactor with negative feedback reactivity coefficients. The power peaks, and turns over with a full width of the power peak at half maximum of seven milliseconds. In this super prompt critical excursion The pulse achieved a peak power of 35,000 megawatts thermal energy. The top figure here shows the power pulse on a linear scale. And the inset to the right shows the power pulse on a logarithmic scale. The behavior of the maximum fuel temperature is shown in the middle graph. And you can see, the fuel temperature starts out at thirty degrees senigrade, and rises to 1220 degrees senigrade. This rise in fuel temperature, provides feedback reactivity. It compensates for the original $3.5 dollars worth of reactivity inserted to start the transit. The bottom line is that the reactor shuts itself down because of negative reactivty feedback effects. We can talk more about reactor kinetics. But I think you've received a pretty big dose of it during this segment. I'll use what little time we have left today to start talking about how all this

energy produced from fission gets removed from a nuclear reactor. We want to understand the ways in which energy removal is more complex. In nuclear reactors and in conventional steam electric systems. In order for the reactor, for the reactor to remain at steady state conditions, energy must be removed at the same rate that it's produced. In all modern reactor designs, heat energy. Produced by fission in the fuel regions is transferred to a working fluid called the coolant flowing through the core. Heat is removed from a pressurized water reactor core by the coolant flow, up the coolant channels, past the fuel. Consider the flow rate to be capital W in units of kilograms per second. The heat capacity of the coolant will have units of Watt seconds per kilogram per degree centigrade. Kind of complex, sorry. And the temperature wise during passage through the core As the outlet temperature minus the inlet temperature. Coolant flow rates for a reactor making 3800 megawatts of thermal energy runs over 20,000 kilograms per second. That's 160 million pounds per hour. That is a heck of a lot of cooling flow. And with that a temperature rise across the core from the inlet to the core to the outlet of the core of 31 degrees centigrade of 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, to maximize the thermodynamic efficiency, we want to keep the temperature rise in the core and therefore the outlet coolant temperature as high as possible. But we must not melt any fuel in the core. Clearly, fuel melting would be bad, primarily because it would ruin the fuel integrity. Which could lead to fishing product release. In hence, we would get radioactive contamination. If melting occurs at even a single spot on the fuel level, the assembly is destroyed. Now during operation there is no way to measure the local power At every location within the core. We typically only know the total core power. And how in the world do we know that? We know the total power in the core by

doing something called a calarametric measurement. The reactor operator calculates How much energy is being removed from the core by measuring flow rates and temperatures going in and out of the core and in and out of the steam generator. The amount of energy being removed is compared to the rated pwoer level of the core. And the instruments in the control room are adjusted to match the calorimetric results. How can operators know that they're not melting fuel at steady state or during transients or accident conditions? We use calculations to determine engineering factors that relate the maximum fuel temperature in the core To the average core power under different conditions. Steady state operation of a reactor is a balancing act. The operator must maintain criticality and maintain the desired power output. The operator must also compensate for feedback effects from temperature changes. Ensure thermal energy removal and ensure no thermal limits are violated. So how does reactor energy removal compare and contrast with energy removal from other non-nuclear conventional power plants? Well a nuclear reactor has a much higher power density. The amount of energy developed for each unit volume of the power plant. We must maintain fuel integrity, so fission products are not released to the environment and we can't use just any material in the reactor. Consider that the materials we must use operate for many months at high temperature and in a high radiation environment. Not all materials can withstand these conditions. And we mustn't forget that one of the unique things about nuclear power, is that when we shut the reactor down, we cannot turn off the heat source. We must be able to continue to remove the decay heat. From radioactive decay of the fission products built up in the core. At the moment the reactor is shut down, we still have a seven and a half percent of the total core power coming from the decay of fission products.

After one hour, the decay heat amounts to 1.3% of total core power. And after one day, the decay heat is still providing 4 10th of a percent of 100% power. If our reactor operates at 3,000 megawatts of thermal energy, after one day, the reactor core is still putting out .004 times 3,000 megawatts or twelve megawatts of thermal energy. That's a lot of heat. Here's a comparison of the power density of nuclear reactors with the power density of other forms of generating thermal energy. With the exception of a rocket engine, which can generate on the order of 20,000 kilowatts per liter of volume. A number of nuclear reactors have a power density much greater than the power density of a conventional fossil power plant. A pressurized water reactor of PWR has a core average power density of 95 To 105 kilowatts per liter of volume of a fossil plant, has a factor 10 times smaller power density. Come back tomorrow, and we will talk about the energy removal from the reactor. Thank you for your kind attention.