See also: General Atomics – TRIGA
See also: General Atomics – TRIGA
Negative feedback as the moderator temperature effect influences the neutron population in the following way. If the temperature of the moderator is increased, negative reactivity is added to the core. This negative reactivity causes reactor power to decrease. As the thermal power decreases, the power coefficient acts against this decrease, and the reactor returns to the critical condition. The reactor power stabilizes itself. In terms of multiplication factor, this effect is caused by significant changes in the resonance escape probability and total neutron leakage (or in the thermal utilization factor when the chemical shim is used).
To describe the influence of all these processes on reactivity, one defines the reactivity coefficient α. A reactivity coefficient is defined as the change of reactivity per unit change in some operating parameter of the reactor. For example:
α = dρ⁄dT
The amount of reactivity, which is inserted into a reactor core by a specific change in an operating parameter, is usually known as the reactivity effect and is defined as:
dρ = α . dT
The reactivity coefficients that are important in power reactors (PWRs) are:
As can be seen, there are not only temperature coefficients that are defined in reactor dynamics. In addition to these coefficients, there are two other coefficients:
The total power coefficient is the combination of various effects and is commonly used when reactors are at power conditions. It is because, at power conditions, it is difficult to separate the moderator effect from the fuel effect and the void effect. All these coefficients will be described in the following separate sections. The reactivity coefficients are of importance in the safety of each nuclear power plant which is declared in the Safety Analysis Report (SAR).