Design of a high order Campbelling mode measurement system using open source hardware
Journal article, 2016

This paper reviews a new real-time measurement instrument dedicated for online neutron monitoring with fission chambers in nuclear reactors. The instrument implements the higher order Campbelling methods and self-monitoring capabilities on an open source development board. The board includes an CPU/FPGA System on a Chip. The feasibility of the measurement instrument was tested both in laboratory with a signal generator and in the Minerve reactor. It is shown that the instrument provides reliable and robust count rate estimation over a wide reactor power range based on the third order statistics of the fission chamber signal. In addition, the system is able to identify whether the measured count rate change is due to the malfunction of the detector or due to the change in the neutron flux. The applied self-monitoring method is based on the spectral properties of the fission chamber signal. During the experimental verification, the considered malfunction was the change of the polarization voltage.

Measurement system

FPGA

High order Campbelling

Count rate estimation

Author

G. De Izarra

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

Zsolt Elter

Chalmers, Physics, Subatomic and Plasma Physics

C. Jammes

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment

0168-9002 (ISSN)

Vol. 839 12-22

Subject Categories

Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation

DOI

10.1016/j.nima.2016.09.038

More information

Latest update

4/11/2018