Control of Xenon Spatial Oscillations during Load Follow of Nuclear Reactor via Robust Servo Systems

This paper investigates the control problem of xenon spatial oscillations in the axial direction during load following operations of a nuclear reactor. The system model is described by a one-group diffusion equation with xenon and power feedbacks and iodine-xenon dynamic equations and controlled by full-length and part-length control rods. In order to achieve the control purpose we formulate the control model as the design problem of robust servo systems for distributed parameter reactor systems. Hence the total thermal power and the axial offset are chosen as outputs to be controlled. The control law is designed based upon finite-dimensional systems which are constructed by linearizing around steady states, approximating by the Galerkin approximate method and reducing dimensions via the singular perturbation method. From a computational point of view a simple computational algorithm to obtain an approximate solution of the steady state neutron balance is developed via the perturbation method. Some result...