• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.573-580
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• 2013

The combined effects of reactivity coefficients, along with other core nuclear characteristics, determine reactor core behavior in normal operation and accident conditions. The Power Coefficient of Reactivity (PCR) is an aggregate indicator representing the change in reactor core reactivity per unit change in reactor power. It is an integral quantity which captures the contributions of the fuel temperature, coolant void, and coolant temperature reactivity feedbacks. All nuclear reactor designs provide a balance between their inherent nuclear characteristics and the engineered reactivity control features, to ensure that changes in reactivity under all operating conditions are maintained within a safe range. The $CANDU^{(R)}$ reactor design takes advantage of its inherent nuclear characteristics, namely a small magnitude of reactivity coefficients, minimal excess reactivity, and very long prompt neutron lifetime, to mitigate the demand on the engineered systems for controlling reactivity and responding to accidents. In particular, CANDU reactors have always taken advantage of the small value of the PCR associated with their design characteristics, such that the overall design and safety characteristics of the reactor are not sensitive to the value of the PCR. For other reactor design concepts a PCR which is both large and negative is an important aspect in the design of their engineered systems for controlling reactivity. It will be demonstrated that during Loss of Regulation Control (LORC) and Large Break Loss of Coolant Accident (LBLOCA) events, the impact of variations in power coefficient, including a hypothesized larger than estimated PCR, has no safety-significance for CANDU reactor design. Since the CANDU 6 PCR is small, variations in the range of values for PCR on the performance or safety of the reactor are not significant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.838-848
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• 2015

One of the most important operations in nuclear power plants is load following, in which an imbalance of axial power distribution induces xenon oscillations. These oscillations must be maintained within acceptable limits otherwise the nuclear power plant could become unstable. Therefore, bounded xenon oscillation is considered to be a constraint for the load following operation. In this paper, the design of a sliding mode control (SMC), which is a robust nonlinear controller, is presented.SMCis ameansto control pressurized water nuclear reactor (PWR) power for the load following operation problem in a way that ensures xenon oscillations are kept bounded within acceptable limits. The proposed controller uses constant axial offset (AO) strategy to ensure xenon oscillations remain bounded. The constant AO is a robust state constraint for the load following problem. The reactor core is simulated based on the two-point nuclear reactor model with a three delayed neutron groups. The stability analysis is given by means of the Lyapunov approach, thus the control system is guaranteed to be stable within a large range. The employed method is easy to implement in practical applications and moreover, the SMC exhibits the desired dynamic properties during the entire output-tracking process independent of perturbations. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller in terms of performance, robustness, and stability. Results show that the proposed controller for the load following operation is so effective that the xenon oscillations are kept bounded in the given region.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.896-904
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• 2017

Several Generation IV nuclear reactor concepts have goals for optimizing investment recovery through phased introduction of multiple units on a common site with shared facilities and/or reconfigurable energy conversion systems. Additionally, small modular reactors are suitable for remote deployment to support highly localized microgrids in isolated, underdeveloped regions. The long-term economic viability of these advanced reactor plants depends on significant reductions in plant operations and maintenance costs. To accomplish these goals, intelligent control and diagnostic capabilities are needed to provide nearly autonomous operations with anticipatory maintenance. A nearly autonomous control system should enable automatic operation of a nuclear power plant while adapting to equipment faults and other upsets. It needs to have many intelligent capabilities, such as diagnosis, simulation, analysis, planning, reconfigurability, self-validation, and decision. These capabilities have been the subject of research for many years, but an autonomous control system for nuclear power generation remains as-yet an unrealized goal. This article describes a functional framework for intelligent, autonomous control that can facilitate the integration of control, diagnostic, and decision-making capabilities to satisfy the operational and performance goals of power plants based on multimodular advanced reactors.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.17-23
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• 1976

The buildup of fission product, i.e. Xe-135 poisoning, is a prime factor in restarting a nuclear reactor from the shutdown, which was under normal operation in the high flux thermal reactor, It is caused by the high absorption crosssection of Xe-135 to thermal neutrons and its long half life, from which the thermal power is affected. It is then possible to restart a nuclear reactor after the sufficient excess reactivity to override this poisoning must be inserted, or its concentration is decreased sufficiently when its temporary shutdown is required. As ratter of fact, these have an important influence not only on reactor safety but also on economic aspect in operation. Considering these points in this study, the shutdown process was cptimized using the Pontryagin's maximum principle so that the shutdown mirth[d was improved as to restart the reactor to its fulpower at any time, but the xenon concentration did not excess the constrained allowable value during and after shutdown, at the same time all the control actions were completed within minimum time from beginning of the shutdown.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
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• 1997.06a
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• pp.53-60
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• 1997

The roasting of pyrite with a cyclone reactor have been studied in terms of investigating the reaction behavior of pyrite. The development of a fundamental model for pyrite oxidation and lime sulfation in a vertical cyclone reactor. The model assumes a chemical control shrinking core behavior for the pyrite and a fluid film control shrinking core behavior for the lime. The oxygen and sulphur dioxide concentrations and the energy balance for the gas, pyrite and lime particles are solved. The model was solved and characterized numerically. Experiments have been performed to study the influence of reaction parameters such as reactor temperatures, pyrite particle sizes, air flow rates, feeding rates, and mixing ratio of pyrite and lime. The oxidation and sulfation products were characterized chemically and physically.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.305-308
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• 1997

The on-line calculation method is developed to obtain the temperature trajectory that brings the reactants to the desired state in batch styrene polymerization reactor. The temperature trajectory is obtained by applying the moments of the polymer concentration to the 2-step calculation method. The computer simulation is also carried out to verify the superiority of the on-line method to the off-line one. When a temperature disturbance of constant size is introduced, the off-line results shows considerable deviation from the target degree of polymerization. The on-line strategy set up a new trajectory to reach the desired state by using the current state of the reactor. Therefore, the on-line strategy deals with the changes of the system more adequately than the off-line strategy.

• Journal of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.641-658
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• 2012

The goal of this paper is to develop a nonlinear observer-based control strategy for a multi-variables continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). A new robust nonlinear observer is constructed to estimate the whole process state variables. The observer is coupled with a nonlinear controller, designed based on the input-output linearization for controlling the concentration and reactor temperature. The closed loop system is shown to be globally asymptotically stable based on Lyapunov arguments. Finally, computer simulations are developed for showing the performance of the proposed controller.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1992.10a
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• pp.931-936
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• 1992

In operational pont of view, the batch reactor is quite different from the continuous reactor in that it is completely in unsteady states. This makes process variables swing over wide ranges and the process disclose its nonlinerarities. For the most part these nonlinearities are due to reaction heat. Accordingly it is very important to know the informations of reaction heat. This paper presents the method of reaction heat measurement in industrial batch reator which furnishes the limited measurable points. The informations of reaction heat are utilized in modeling of the batch reactor as well as deciding the stability and control variables.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.299-304
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• 1997

A neuro-fuzzy control algorithm is applied for xenon spatial oscillations in a pressurized water reactor. The consequent and antecedent parameters of the fuzzy rules are tuned by the gradient descent mettled. The reactor model used for computer simulations is a two-point xenon oscillation model. The reactor core is axially divided into two regions and each region has one input and one output and is coupled with the other region. The interaction between the regions of the reactor core is treated by a decoupling scheme. This proposed control of mettled exhibits very fast responses to a step or a ramp change of target axial offset without any residual flux oscillations.

• 전기의세계
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1-5
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• 1966

The stability and safety of operation of a reactor is determined mainly by the sign and magnitude of its reactivity responses to temperature changes. Reactors are subject to temperature fluctuations due to the changes in reactor power and ambient temperature. These temperature fluctuations cause reactivity disturbances through changes in the nuclear and physical properties of the core. Because of these important phenomena by the temperature effects, a large portion of study and testing on a reactor design has been conducted. In this experiment the overall temperature coefficient of the TRIGA MARK-II reactor is measured. The basic procedure is to change the tgemperature of the water moderator, and from the movements of a newly recalibrated control rod(this is necessary due to the effects of fuel burn-up and control rod depression) required to mintain criticality, the reactivity worth of the temperature change is determined. From this measurement, the overall temperature coefficient seems to be smoothly varying, almost a linear function of temperature, and a value of approximately -0.267${\c}$/$^{\circ}C$ can be obtained for an average temperature range from $17.6^{\circ}C$ to $32.5^{\circ}C$.