Analysis of the stability of events occurred in Laguna Verde

The new fuel designs for operation cycles more long have regions of uncertainty bigger that those of the old fuels, and therefore, they can have oscillations of power when an event is presented that causes that the reactor operates to high power and low flow of coolant. During the start up of the reactor there are continued procedures that avoid that oscillations are presented with that which makes sure the stable behavior of the reactor. However, when the reactor is operating to nominal conditions and they are shot or they are transferred to low speed the recirculation pumps, it cannot make sure that the reactor doesn't present oscillations of power when entering to the restricted operation regions. The methods of stability analysis commonly use signs of neutronic noise that require to be stationary, but after a transitory one where they commonly get lost the recirculation pumps the signs they don't have the required characteristics, for what they are used with certain level of uncertainty by the limited validity of the models. In this work the Prony method is used to determine the reactor stability, starting from signs of transitory and it is compared with autoregressive models. Four events are analyzed happened in the Laguna Verde power plant where the reactor was in the area of high power and low flow of coolant, giving satisfactory results. (Author)