Kinetics, Reactivity Effects, and Control Requirements

Values for reactivity effects are required both for transient safety analysis and for control requirements during normal operation. Reactivity effects of importance in fast reactor design and safety include (1) effects of dimensional changes in core geometry, (2) the Doppler effect, (3) effects of sodium density changes or loss of sodium, and (4) long-term reactivity loss from fuel burnup. The reactor control system must compensate for these reactivities during normal operation and provide sufficient margin to handle off-normal situations. We begin this chapter with a review of the reactor kinetics equations (Section 6.2). We then proceed to discuss adjoint flux and perturbation theory (Section 6.3) since these are needed for an understanding of reactivity effects.