Coordination Control of SMR-Based NSSS Modules Integrated by Feedwater Distribution

Due to its strong safety feature, the small modular reactor whose electric output is no more than 300MWe has been seen as a promising trend in nuclear engineering. By adopting multi-modular scheme, i.e. the superheated steam flows produced by multiple SMR-based nuclear heating system (NSSS) modules are combined to drive a common thermal load, the strong safety feature of a SMR can be applied to large-scale nuclear plants. To improve the economic competitiveness, it is meaningful to integrate multiple NSSS modules by the scheme of feedwater distribution, i.e. sharing a common pump and distributing feedwater by adjusting the opening of regulating valve of each module. The module coordination control of multiple SMR-based NSSS modules coupled by feedwater distribution is essentially the flowrate-pressure control of the common secondary-loop fluid flow network (FFN). In this paper, the nonlinear differential-algebraic model for the FFNs with a single feedwater pump is first given. A novel distributed adaptive flowrate-pressure control is proposed, which is then applied to realize the module coordination. Numerical simulation results in the case of coordination control of two MHTGR-based NSSS modules integrated by feedwater distribution scheme show the feasibility as well as the satisfactory transient performance of this newly-built coordination control law.