Thermal Hydraulic Coupling Research Articles

Coherence Analysis of Boiling Water Reactor Noise

Empirical studies of coherences between measurement variables from the operating data of a commercial nuclear power station of 460 MWe are applied to derive dynamical characteristics of the Boiling Water Reactor and to attempt to identify the noise sources of the neutron flux. Multivariate techniques with the partial coherence function and the multiple coherence function are introduced to eliminate correlated effects among measurement variables due to thermal hydraulic coupling and sophisticated reactivity feedbacks. From the results, the usual coherency (the ordinary coherence function) may not be adequate to estimate linear relations between measurement variables of the BWR. Furthermore, the noise sources of the neutron flux is discussed.