Noise-Based Core Monitoring And Diagnostics – Overview of the Cortex Project

This paper gives an overview of the CORTEX project, which is a Research and Innovation Action
funded by the European Union in the Euratom 2016-2017 work program, under the Horizon 2020
framework. CORTEX, which stands for CORe monitoring Techniques and EXperimental validation
and demonstration, aims at developing an innovative core monitoring technique that allows
detecting anomalies in nuclear reactors, such as excessive vibrations of core internals, flow
blockage, coolant inlet perturbations, etc. The technique is based on primarily using the inherent
fluctuations in neutron flux recorded by in-core and ex-core instrumentation (often referred to as
neutron noise), from which the anomalies will be differentiated depending on their type, location
and characteristics. In addition to be non-intrusive and not requiring any external perturbation of the
system, the method allows the detection of operational problems at a very early stage. Proper
actions could thus be taken by utilities before such problems have any adverse effect on plant safety
and reliability.