Self-Stability Analysis and Nonlinear Power-Level Control for Pressurized Water Reactors

Power-level regulation is a key technique that provides both economic and stable operation for any nuclear reactors. Since the pressurized water reactors (PWR) are not only the most widely utilized nuclear reactors but also complex nonlinear systems, efficient nonlinear power-level control strategy is meaningful to not only the development of nuclear power technique but also the renaissance of nuclear energy. Further, since self-stability is the most crucial dynamic feature of nuclear reactors, it is necessary to give self-stability analysis which gives the means to strengthen the closed-loop stability. In this paper, a sufficient condition of globally asymptotic self-stability for PWR is firstly given. Based on this self-stability analysis, a nonlinear state-feedback power-level control law with L₂ disturbance attenuation performance is then proposed. This new controller is applied to the power-level regulation of a nuclear heating reactor (NHR), and simulation results show its feasibility and high performance.