Comparison of the calculated neutron noise using finite differences and the Analytical Nodal Method

Journal article, 2012

In this paper, a comparison of the calculated neutron noise, i.e. the fluctuation of the neutron flux around its average value assuming that all processes are stationary, is conducted, where the neutron noise is calculated using finite differences alone and with finite differences where the Analytical Nodal Method is used to correct the neutron currents, respectively. It is seen that the lower the frequency of the noise source, the larger difference between the two solutions. The main conclusion from this work is that the gain of calculating the neutron noise using the more sophisticated Analytical Nodal Method compared to the increase of the corresponding computational burden is too little to motivate the use of the ANM.