Estimation of the Doppler Coefficient from a Lower Power Transient Observed in a Zero-Power Reactor Physics Test of a PWR (I)—Methodology—

Abstract

A method for estimating the Doppler coefficient from low power transient data that are measured in a routine experiment conducted in a zero-power reactor physics test of a PWR power plant has been developed. A dynamics identification model was introduced by considering two dynamics components for reactor kinetics and heat removal in the primary coolant loops. The dynamics identification method in the time domain was applied under consideration that the effect of reactivity feedback observed in the experiment was very small and measured transient data contained some intermittent intervals unavailable for dynamics identification. Unknown parameters, including the Doppler coefficient, contained in the dynamics model were determined stepwise through five estimation steps. In these steps, gamma ray noises were removed from the NIS signal, the reactivity feedback component was extracted from reactivity transient, and fuel temperature transient was determined in such way as to reproduce the observed low power transient in the digital simulation. In the final step, the Doppler coefficient was estimated from the extracted reactivity feedback component using the quantities evaluated in the preceding steps. The estimated value agreed well with the value evaluated with a core design code.