Numerical solution analysis of fractional point kinetics and heat exchange in nuclear reactor

Reactivity disturbance suppression method for small modular reactors based on core coolant flow control

Small modular reactors (SMR) have an exceptionally wide range of applications due to their flexibility. But the reactivity of SMR is more susceptible to disturbance than that of large commercial reactors, which may cause the core power to deviate from the set value, and the limited internal space makes it difficult for SMR to compensate or adjust for reactivity disturbance by setting a sufficient number of control rods as in large commercial reactors. Therefore, in order to improve the operational stability of SMR, a method is proposed to indirectly change the nuclear fuel temperature by adjusting the coolant flow rate and thus compensate the reactivity disturbance by the Doppler effect of nuclear fuel resonance absorption. Simulation experiments show that the method can effectively eliminate reactive disturbances that cannot be completely eliminated by control rods under the conditions of restricted SMR space and limited number of control rod sets, thus providing operational stability of SMR.

Power Level Control of Nuclear Power Plant Based on Asymptotical State Observer under Neutron Sensor Fault

Power level control is one of the critical functions in the instrument and control system of nuclear power plants (NPPs). In most power level control systems of NPPs, the power level or average neutron flux in reactor cores provided by out-of-core neutron sensors are usually measured as feedback of power control systems, while, as critical measuring devices, there is a risk of damage to out-of-core neutron sensors. For improving the operation reliability of NPPs under the neutron sensors’ failure, a power control system based on power observer is developed in this work. The simulation based on NPP simulator shows the power control system based on the observer is effective when neutron sensors fail.

Fuzzy Multi-Regional Fractional PID controller for Pressurized Water nuclear Reactor

The paper presents the methodology for the synthesis of a Fuzzy Multi-Regional Fractional Order PID controller (FMR-FOPID) used to control the average thermal power of a PWR nuclear reactor in the load following mode. The controller utilizes a set of FOPID controllers and the fuzzy logic Takagi-Sugeno reasoning system. The proposed methodology is based on two optimization parts. The first part is devoted to finding the optimal parameters of local FOPID controllers and in the second part, the optimal membership functions of the fuzzy reasoning system are designed. During the controller designing and comparison phase, the two validated nodal models of a nuclear reactor are used, simplified model and extended model respectively. The proposed approach has been verified by computer simulations that confirm its effectiveness.