Reactor Power Distribution from Analysis of In-Core Detector Readings

A method is developed for obtaining information about reactor power shapes from readings of in-core detectors. The readings are used to determine the coefficients for an expansion of the space-dependent power in terms of a set of basis functions. A least squares approach ensures that all the detector readings contribute to the result. Test cases for one-, two-, and three-dimensional distributions show that accurate results can be obtained with a rather simple choice of basis functions.