Stability of Reactor Control Systems in Coupled Core Reactors

For combating not only general deviations in total power, but localized flux (power) perturbations as well, separate control systems are designed for separate cores of the coupled-core reactor. In this paper conditions are obtained for global asymptotic stability of a coupled core reactor including its control system. The results obtained here for stability are in the form of the weaker Popov condition, which allows the determination of stability geometrically in the frequency domain. An example of a coupled core reactor with typical parameters is given to illustrate the ease involved in the determination of stability.