Perhaps auxiliary heater is for preheating inlet water so that the temperature gradient of water is smoother. This would help to maintain more constant temperature in the core and thus increase controllability, as heat energy from reactor core is used for making steam at constant temperature, but not for warming water. Finding equilibrium might be more difficult if there is extra variable involved with warming water.
This could explain why small reactors do not reduce input power when reaction starts, because it is just diverted to auxiliary heater. With large E-Cats, there presumably was not auxiliary heater, but when reactor was started, input power was just reduced. But as power output was so large, warming little water did not make much of difference. As Rossi was in hurry to build working MW-plant for public demo purpose, this kind of short cut in design would make sense, because control issues could be solved later. And as Rossi and Stremmenos now confirmed, it is now solved. —Jouni On Jul 22, 2011 3:37 PM, "Terry Blanton" <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote:
