Pre-simulations of Reactivity Device Manoeuvres at Darlington With RFSP and RRS Emulator

Abstract

Reactivity device manoeuvres were completed at 30%FP reactor power, on May 18th2012, during startup after a 2012 long outage. The main objective of these tests was to confirm that the newSDS1 and SDS2 NOP detectors were positioned at the correct locations in the reactor. Reactor physics pre-simulations were executed using a combination of the stand-alone RFSP code and the coupled RFSP/RRS Emulator code suite. The intent of these simulations was to calculate the response of the NOP detectors signals and predict the impact of the reactivity device manoeuvres on operational metrics, such as flux tilt, in order to ensure that these metrics are within acceptable operational limits. Good agreement was found between measurements and the pre-simulations.