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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.
D. N. Bridges, J. D. Clement
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 47 | Number 4 | April 1972 | Pages 421-434
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22434
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This investigation involved a theoretical and experimental study of space-dependent reactor transfer functions with temperature feedback. The reactor transfer function under investigation was the neutron flux response to an input perturbation or source. An existing theoretical model, known as the complex source method, was extended to include temperature feedback effects and the resultant equations were programmed for a model of the Georgia Tech Research Reactor (GTRR). Spatial transfer function measurements were made in the GTRR using an in-core pile oscillator employing a pseudo-random binary sequence. Several detector locations were investigated for both zero-power and at-power (900 kW) conditions over a frequency range from 4 × 10−4 to 8.5 Hz. Data were taken and stored on magnetic tape using two PDP-8 computers and a magnetic tape unit. The theoretical calculations and the experimental results agreed quite closely. Temperature feedback effects for the GTRR were observed to occur at frequencies of 2 × 10−2 Hz and lower, and to become quite pronounced below 1 × 10−3 Hz. Spatial effects were observed to be significant only for frequencies above 1 Hz. The agreement of the calculations with the experimental results served to validate the theoretical model.