Sodium boiling detection in LMFBRs by acoustic-neutronic cross correlation

Abstract

The acoustic and neutronic noise signals caused by boiling are the signals primarily considered likely to detect sodium boiling in an LMFBR. Unfortunately, these signals may have serious signal-to-noise problems due to strong background noise sources. Neutronic-acoustic cross correlation techniques are expected to provide a means of improving the signal-to-noise ratio. This technique can improve the signal-to-noise ratio because the neutronic and acoustic signals due to boiling are highly correlated near the bubble repetition frequency, while the background noise sources are expected to be uncorrelated (or at most weakly correlated). An experiment was designed to show that the neutronic and acoustic noise signals are indeed highly correlated. The experiment consisted of simulating the void and pressure effects of local sodium boiling in the core of a zero-power reactor (ARK). The analysis showed that the neutronic and acoustic noise signals caused by boiling are almost perfectly correlated in a wide frequency band about the bubble repetition frequency. The results of the experiments were generalized to full-scale reactors to compare the inherent effectiveness of the methods which use the neutronic or acoustic signals alone with a hybrid method, which cross correlates the neutronic and acoustic signals. It was concluded that over a zone of the reactor where the void coefficient is sufficiently large (approximately 85 percent the core volume), the cross correlation method can provide a more rapid detection system for a given signal-to-noise ratio. However, where the void coefficient is small, one must probably rely on the acoustic method alone.