THE SELF-LIMITING POWER EXCURSION BEHAVIOUR OF THE SLOWPOKE REACTORnRESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS AND QUALITATIVE EXPLANATION

摘要

This report describes all the transient experi¬ments performed on both the SLOWPOKE-1 (CRNL) and the SLOWPOKE-2 (Ottawa) reactors between 1970 and 1973.nData is presented in terms of the measured para¬meters, reactor power and coolant temperatures, and the derived system reactivity, during self-limiting power excursions following rapid reactivity insertions of up to 6.48 mk.nDuring a typical excursion the reactor power exhibits several distinct peaks which increase in number and magnitude as the size of the reactivity excursion increases. A maximum peak power of 186 kW was observed.nThis report discusses qualitatively the many phenomena influencing transient behaviour, and presents a limited analysis of the experimental results.