Probe diagnostics of a plasma generated in an N2-O2 mixture in the core of a nuclear reactor

One of the most important advantages of electric probes as diagnostics tools for low-temperature plasmas in their simplicity of implementation. This property allows them to be used to determine the parameters of plasmas in the cores of nuclear reactors - under conditions where diagnostics are ordinarily extremely difficult. Probe measurements in plasmas generated in the cores of steady-state nuclear reactors are customarily made and interpreted by a technique based on the use of the linear part of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic of an electric probe. It is shown that the values of the plasma conductivity determined by this technique from the experimental I-V characteristics of probes of different geometries agree with the calculated values over the entire range of conditions investigated