Nuclear Reactor Kinetics and Control

Nuclear Reactor Kinetics and Control highlights the application of classical control methods in the frequency space to the dynamic processes of a nuclear reactor.

This book contains nine chapters and begins with an introduction to some important mathematical theories related to nuclear engineering, such as the Laplace and Fourier transforms, linear system stability, and the probability theory. The succeeding chapters deal with the frequency space of classical linear design. A chapter describes a stochastic model for the “lumped reactor” and presents equations that measure the departure from the mean, as well as representative experiments or applications of the theory to neutron detection. The discussion then shifts to the aspects of reliability and its consequences for safety of nuclear reactors and some techniques for nonlinear studies centered on the use of the state space and its equations in the time domain. The final chapter introduces the modern electric analogue computer and derives the patching or programming rules that can be use to find solutions to problems of interest using the analogous behavior of electric circuits. This chapter also provide examples of intrinsic interest in nuclear engineering showing the programming involved and typical results, including the slower transients of xenon poisoning and fuel burn-up.

This book is intended for nuclear engineers, physicists, applied mathematicians, and nuclear engineering undergraduate and postgraduate students.