Thermal power calibration in the Peruvian research reactor RP-0 by neutron noise

The reactor RP-0 is a MTR type research reactor. To calibrate the operation power, we measure the average neutron flux in the nuclear core for a fixed level current of the ionization chamber associated to the reactor instrumentation. This method involves a large time used in characterizing the whole core configuration and a reduced dependability if it is carried out in smaller time; besides that, this method determines the thermal power for only one level. In RP-0, the neutron noise technique has been incorporated in order to carry out the power calibration in real time. This technique is a statistical method in the domain of frequency based on the point kinetic model independent of the space. The present work exposes results of power measurements for different levels of current (power calibration) for the RP-0 with the critical reactor. The reproducibility of the results was evaluated with two compensated ionization chambers (order of efficiencies 4 x 10-4) located in the core; one of the detectors was fixed whereas the other one was varying in diverse positions of the RP-0 core. It was also considered different configurations of critical control rods in the definition of critical position. The results obtained show statistical consistency that confirm the kindness of the neutron noise technique; also, the result of one level of power was compared with the value obtained by neutron activation. (author)