Robust nonlinear model predictive control for nuclear power plants in load following operations with bounded xenon oscillations

Eliasi, Hussein; Menhaj, M B; Davilu, Hadi

doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2010.12.004

Cited by 94 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Weakly coupled thermal systems (typically spatially large systems) can also undergo xenon oscillations (Eliasi et al 2011) because Xe135 is a fission product poison (FPP). These oscillations occur when regions of higher fission density (initially at the center of a reactor core) create proportionately more fission product poisons than neighboring low fission density regions.…”

Section: Nuclear Criticality Coupling (Geometry Buckling or Materialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear criticality as a contributor to gamma ray burst events

Hayes¹

2013

Astrophys Space Sci

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-Most gamma ray bursts are able to be explained using supernovae related phenomenon. Some measured results still lack compelling explanations and a contributory cause from nuclear criticality is proposed. This is shown to have general properties consistent with various known gamma ray burst properties. The galactic origin of fast rise exponential decay gamma ray bursts is considered a strong candidate for these types of events. BackgroundThe Oklo uranium mine in South Africa is a place where the natural abundance of U235 was found to be consistently less than the 0.72% found everywhere else on the planet (with the remainder of the uranium being almost entirely U238). It was not until the excess isotopic distribution from the stable fission product decay nuclides was found that it was realized this was an ancient natural nuclear reactor (Cowan 1976). Because the half life of U235 is almost an order of magnitude smaller than that of U238, the ratio of U235 to U238 increases in reverse time. By going back far enough in time, the abundance of the two nuclides would become comparable. With sufficiently enriched uranium in the soil, addition of moisture from rain would then provide the necessary moderation for the earth to sustain a natural nuclear chain reaction until the heat would drive away the water and return the system to a subcritical state. This process is believed to have occurred over a billion years ago in central Africa (Fujii et al. 2000).If the Oklo reactor occurred naturally as a result of uranium created in supernovae (SN) events, it is not incredible to think that it could occur prior to accumulation into planetary form from other SN events. In other words, just after the SN creation of the uranium and transuranic isotopes, most of the already radioactive elements created will quickly decay into stable atoms leaving these fissile and fissionable isotopes close to their original abundance. Even if a large fraction of the Pu239 (which is fissile with a moderately long half life of just over 24 ka) were to decay away, there would still be almost the initial amount of U233 (which is fissile with a moderately long half life of just under 0.2 ma) with only a negligible fraction of the U235 having decayed away. If a gravitational accumulation of the SN excreta were to occur within some few years, a longer list of potential fissile isotopes could be present in the material including Pu241, Am243, Cm243, Cm245, Cm247, etc while the majority of the radioactive elements would still have decayed into stable isotopes. This presents a dynamic reactivity dependency in terms of the fissile nuclides generated which would be strongly dependent on the initial isotopic distribution source term.The model presented here has the potential to explain some of the highly varied nature of a portion of measured gamma ray bursts (GRBs). These include the random nature of the events in terms of their parametric values and ranges. Specifically many measured values of energy and time distributions, pulsing, and afterglows ...

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Section: Nuclear Criticality Coupling (Geometry Buckling or Materialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear criticality as a contributor to gamma ray burst events

Hayes¹

2013

Astrophys Space Sci

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“…Model predictive control method has been applied for the loadfollowing operation problem considering xenon oscillations (Eliasi et al, 2011), but this method is hard to implement and has high computational volume.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sliding mode control design for a PWR nuclear reactor using sliding mode observer during load following operation

Ansarifar

Akhavan

2015

Annals of Nuclear Energy

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“…Tai [22] also gave a MPC-based power-level control to a movable nuclear power plant. Etchepareborda and Eliasi [23][24][25] proposed nonlinear MPC (NMPC) method for PWR power-level control design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Artificial Neural Network Compensated Output Feedback Power-Level Control for Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

Dong

2014

Energies

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Small modular reactors (SMRs) could be beneficial in providing electricity power safely and also be viable for applications such as seawater desalination and heat production. Due to its inherent safety features, the modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) has been seen as one of the best candidates for building SMR-based nuclear power plants. Since the MHTGR dynamics display high nonlinearity and parameter uncertainty, it is necessary to develop a nonlinear adaptive power-level control law which is not only beneficial to the safe, stable, efficient and autonomous operation of the MHTGR, but also easy to implement practically. In this paper, based on the concept of shifted-ectropy and the physically-based control design approach, it is proved theoretically that the simple proportional-differential (PD) output-feedback power-level control can provide asymptotic closed-loop stability. Then, based on the strong approximation capability of the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network (ANN), a compensator is established to suppress the negative influence caused by system parameter uncertainty. It is also proved that the MLP-compensated PD power-level control law constituted by an experientially-tuned PD regulator and this MLP-based compensator can guarantee bounded closed-loop stability. Numerical simulation results not only verify the theoretical results, but also illustrate the high performance of this MLP-compensated PD power-level controller in suppressing the oscillation of process variables caused by system parameter uncertainty.

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Robust nonlinear model predictive control for nuclear power plants in load following operations with bounded xenon oscillations

Cited by 94 publications

References 28 publications

Nuclear criticality as a contributor to gamma ray burst events

Nuclear criticality as a contributor to gamma ray burst events

Sliding mode control design for a PWR nuclear reactor using sliding mode observer during load following operation

An Artificial Neural Network Compensated Output Feedback Power-Level Control for Modular High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

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