Digital Count-Rate Meter and Flux-Change-Rate Meter with Automatic Adjust of Counting Time Based on FPGA for Pulse-Mode Flux Measurements in Nuclear Reactors

Abstract

This paper describes a digital count-rate meter and flux-change-rate meter implemented using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology with proprietary algorithms developed for measuring pulse-mode flux and its variations at startup of nuclear research reactors. Due to its auto-adjusting counting time implementation which optimizes the trade-off between statistical precision and response time, it provides a wide range of count-rate from 0.1 to $\pmb{10^{6}}$ pulse per second with response time inversely proportional to the actual count-rate.