Grounded Control Rod Position Measurement With Two-Electrode Capacitance Sensor

In the work, we employed a new method to monitor the behavior of the grounded control rod. To this end, a sensor system based on the two-electrode capacitance is applied to measure the rod position in nuclear heating reactor. Additionally, the finite element method was used to analyze the capacitance of the sensors composed of two-electrode. According to the different electric properties of grounded control rod and air, this apparatus determines the control rod position using an interface electronics method and two -electrode capacitance sensor. The capacitance data obtained by simulations were compared with experiment results to verify the measurement accuracy. The subsequent quantitative analyses on the data indicate the reliability and accuracy of the apparatus for monitoring rod position. It is demonstrated that such a system shows very promising applications for measurements of the control rod position of nuclear reactor.