Innovative Hybrid Pile Oscillator Technique in the Minerve Reactor: Open Loop Versus Closed Loop

Abstract

Pile oscillator techniques are powerful methods to measure small reactivity worth of isotopes of interest for nuclear data improvement. This kind of experiment has long been implemented in the Minerve experimental reactor, operated by CEA Cadarache, Saint-Paul-les-Durance, France. A hybrid technique mixing reactivity worth and flux variations surrounding the oscillator is presented here. It was made possible after developing high-sensitivity miniature fission chambers introduced next to the irradiation channel. A test campaign, called MAESTRO-SL, took place in 2015. Its objective was to assess the feasibility of the hybrid method and investigate the separation of mixed neutron effects, such as fission and capture or scattering and capture. The experimental results are presented and discussed in this paper, which focus on comparing two measurement setups, one using a power control system (closed-loop technique) and another one in which reactor power is free to drift (open-loop technique). First, it is demonstrated that the open loop is equivalent to the closed loop, and both techniques bring similar results. It is shown that measuring the flux change around oscillated samples provides valuable information on partial neutron cross sections. Second, uncertainty management and methods’ reproducibility are discussed. As expected, both techniques can achieve similar performances. In this paper, uncertainty as low as 0.007 pcm for samples’ reactivity worth and $1.2 \times 10^{-4}$ for local flux change were achieved.