Physically-based power-level control of modular high temperature gas-cooled reactors — Part II: Controller design and simulation

Because of its strong inherent safety, the modular high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactor (MHTGR) has been seen as the chosen technology for the next generation of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Power-level control is one of the key techniques that provide the safe, stable and efficient operation for the MHTGRs. Moreover, the physically based control theory is a promising developing trend of modern control theory and provides a control design approach that restraining the unstable part of the system dynamics and remaining the stable part. Usually, the regulator designed by using the physically based control theory has simple form and high performance. Motivated by this, a dynamic output feedback power-level control is established in this paper by the full use of the feature of the shifted-ectropy of a nuclear energy system. This control strategy guarantees the globally asymptotic stability and provides satisfactory transient responses through adjusting the feedback gains. Simulation results not only verify the correctness of the theoretical results but also illustrate the high control performance.