Abstract
Since the first commercial nuclear plant Obninsk began to operate, there have been dozens of types of nuclear plants studied, designed, or constructed nowadays driven by the key issue: how to enhance the economic competitiveness of nuclear plants while ensuring safety. Research on the key issue stimulated the evolution of nuclear plants, which simultaneously brought an array of various control problems for each generation and ultimately attributed to the evolution of control strategies of nuclear plants. In this paper, the main development route of nuclear plants is presented with a concise introduction to the representative design of nuclear plants for each generation. Meanwhile, the corresponding control problems brought by the design and/or the safety requirement document, national and international requirements, and so forth, were analyzed with emphasis on the Gen IV multi-modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR). On account of the requirement to cooperate with other renewable energies to achieve the “Emission peak, Carbon neutrality” through the improvement of operation flexibility of NPP, most SMR plants work in the reactor following mode which requires more R&D efforts on the coordination control and load-following control to enhance economic advantages of SMR plants, etc.
