Calibration of in-reactor detectors and determination of the computational error of the RBMK-1000 SKALA-mikro information measuring system

• Published in: Atomic energy (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 114; no. 2; pp. 140 - 142
• Main Authors: Aleksandrov, S. I., Bolshov, A. A., Demenko, I. P., Kornienko, A. V., Novikov, I. V., Postnikov, V. V., Yakunin, I. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-06-2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analysis; Calibration; Detectors; Energy; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Measurement techniques; Measuring instruments; Nuclear Chemistry; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Physics; Nuclear reactors; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Radiation; Reactors; Research methodology; Sensors; Studies; Fuel Assembly; Spectral Sensitivity; Reconstruction Error; Sensitive Part; Factory Calibration
• ISSN: 1063-4258; 1573-8205
• DOI: 10.1007/s10512-013-9685-z

Several methods are used to calibrate in-reactor detectors or to determine their sensitivity to the power of the fuel assemblies at zero burnup. For a long time, the most widely used method was axial scanning of the fuel assemblies of assembly 49 with a dry hollow casing by detector Dt.6 or Dt.4 with an HfO2 detector and long sensitive part, whose length equals the core height [1]. The power of a fuel channel with an in-reactor detector, reconstructed from the scan results and calculated using the signals from the detector, was used to determine its sensitivity taking account of the burnup of the fuel assembly and detector. The rms deviation of the error in this calibration is 34%. Subsequently, an adjacent reference sample was used to calibrate the sensitive part of the detector, since the amount of HfO2 per unit length of the sensitive part varies very little along the sensor cable.