Analysis of Single Operation Mode for Wide-range Nuclear Power Channel

A wide-range power channel is a nuclear reactor power measurement instrument that can measure up to 10 decades of the reactor's power level. Normally, a wide-range power channel works in more than one operation mode: pulse mode, Campbell mode, and current mode. This operation process could be simplified by analyzing the possibility of using one operation mode to measure a wide-range of nuclear reactor power. This research investigates the feasibility of using a single Campbell mode to measure a wide range (nine decades) of Kartini nuclear reactor power. There are 108 sets of neutron detector output signals across various power levels was analyzed using ANOVA and Fisher LSD methods. Another data set with narrower steps was also taken to find the regression equation between Campbell's mode of neutron detector output signal and reactor power. The results of the ANOVA and Fisher LSD tests indicated promising results for measuring reactor power by using Campbell mode only. Every decade of reactor power changes significantly affects the Campbell mode of the neutron detector output. The calculated regression also provides good results, with the coefficient of determination being 0.9976. © 2024 IEEE.