Alternative analysis of the MINERVE ZPR oscillation experiments

Delayed neutrons are of fundamental importance in the field of nuclear reactor dynamics and control. However, the precursor yield fraction for a given nuclear reactor are dependent on the properties of the reactor. Thus, in-pile experiments, such as oscillation experiments are conducted in order to measure those values. In this work, an alternative analysis of the piston oscillation experiments that have been conducted in the MINERVE reactor in 2013 is performed. A new method which evolves effective terms that cancel out undesired drifts of the flux during the experiments is presented. The evaluation of the uncertainty on the values of the response function is also presented. Moreover, the effective delayed neutron fraction β_eff is evaluated and is compared to results in previous works. As the analysis has led to an estimation of β_eff with a large uncertainty, it has been deduced that the oscillation experiments that have been conducted in MINERVE are not a reliable method of experimentation to determine the value of β_eff in the reactor and that the noise experiments are better suited for that purpose