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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
Wayne K. Lehto, John M. Carpenter
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 33 | Number 2 | August 1968 | Pages 225-237
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A20660
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fission rate fluctuations at low power in a reactor with a large fission-product inventory have been observed in the pool-type Ford Nuclear Reactor. A gaseous Cerenkov detector was used to sense the high-energy, prompt-fission gamma rays in the presence of a fission-product gamma field of 105 to 106 R/h. The ratio β/l is determined from the cross power spectral density of the fluctuations in the signals from two of these detectors. Both this spectrum and the power spectral density of the output of a single detector show a large low-frequency component. This is attributed to moderator temperature fluctuations present when the fission-product decay heat is removed by natural circulation of the coolant. The temperature fluctuations as measured with a short-time-constant thermocouple are shown to be correlated to those in the fission rate. The detector is described, as well as a basis for calculating its performance and efficiency. A theory of the gamma noise experiment that reveals the effects of the detector on the measured spectrum is presented.