METHOD FOR MONITORING COOLANT STEAM QUALITY IN NUCLEAR REACTOR Russian patent published in 2001 - IPC

FIELD: nuclear power engineering; coolant monitoring inside and outside reactor core. SUBSTANCE: in order to prevent development of emergency situations due to lack of information on coolant condition during reactor shutdown, collector and emitter are placed in coolant layer. Emitter has source long-living radioactive strontium-90 isotope resulting from nuclear reactions and transformed in radioactive decay into daughter short-living yttrium-90 isotope that emits high-energy beta particles; upon passing through coolant layer the latter are accumulated on collector. Current produced in the process runs from collector to normalizing transducer and further on to computer wherein liquid steam quality is computed using known calibration characteristic. EFFECT: improved precision due to elimination of external or gamma radiation impacts. 4 dwg, 1 tbl