Principles of traditional reactor diagnostics and noise analysis

Book chapter, 2025

The principles of reactor diagnostics for the current generation of reactors are available in a few monographs and review articles [1-8]. For a wider perspective on the subject, the reader is recommended to explore these sources. However, with regards the methods used in this book, we tried to make the text self-contained, such that all the basics are explained that are needed to follow the derivations and the extensions introduced to make the methods suitable for applications to next generation reactors. This is the subject of this chapter. As it was already mentioned in the Introduction to the book and is reflected in the aforementioned references, neutron noise diagnostics has two different branches, which differ in many aspects, such as the origin of the neutron fluctuations, the operational domain in which the two types dominate, the mathematical methods used for their description and the application area. For this reason, the applications in the future systems will also be treated in separate chapters. In this overview chapter for the methods used so far in traditional systems, they will both be included.