The steady states of a non-cooperative model of nuclear reactors

This paper characterizes the existence of coexistence states in a reaction–diffusion model arising in the theory of nuclear reactors. From a mathematical point of view, the importance of this model relies upon the fact that the associated variational systems are of non-cooperative type and, consequently, the comparison techniques available for cooperative systems fail to work out. Although in higher spatial dimensions the dynamics of the model might be rather involved, by the absence of limitations for the number of steady states, we can prove the uniqueness of the steady state in the one-dimensional prototype model. Our results complement and eventually sharpen the findings of Arioli [G. Arioli, Long term dynamics of a reaction–diffusion system, J. Differential Equations 235 (2007) 298–307].