Fluctuations of the fission energy generated in a multiplying system

Journal article, 2017

The purpose of this work is to elaborate a master equation formalism for the evolution of the probability distribution of the cumulative energy generated by fissions in a multiplying system with delayed neutrons. The formalism accounts for the fact that the fission energy chi is also a random variable, thus the fluctuations of the total energy generated are due to both the fluctuations of the number of fissions, as well as to the fluctuations of the energy per fission. By comparing to the case where the fission energy is taken as constant, the significance of the fluctuations of the fission energy can be assessed. The first two moments of the cumulative fission energy are determined explicitly, and the time dependence of the expectation and the variance is calculated for different reactivities. As expected, the variance of the energy per fission does not play a significant role in the variance of the cumulative fission energy.