Regulating the Nuclear Reactor through Changes of the Fraction of Delayed Neutrons: Theoretical Probabilities

Dmitry V. Filippov, Leonid I. Urutskoev, Valery I. Rachkov, Olga I. Gadzaova, Larion A. Lebedev

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DOI: 10.4236/jmp.2010.16054                

Abstract

In recent years а significant number of both theoretical and experimental works devoted to the influence of external electromagnetic fields and ionization on the probability of beta decays have been published. The present work investigates the feasibility of using this physical effect as the main mechanism for controlling the reactor. In this paper a system of equations is written and studied that allows one to describe the work of a nuclear reactor in the case where the probability of beta decay and, therefore, the fraction of delayed neu-trons is a function of time. It is shown that in the case of a constant fraction of delayed neutrons, the pro-posed system of equations is identical to the known system. As can be seen from analysis of a solution of the new system of equations for the proposed method of reactor control, acceleration by instantaneous neutrons is impossible even theoretically.

Keywords

Fraction of Delayed Neutrons, Bound-State Beta-Decay, Kinetic Equation

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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