Output feedback PD power-level control for modular high temperature gas-cooled reactors

Due to its inherent safety feature, the modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) has been seen as one of the best candidates in building next generation nuclear plants (NGNPs). Since the MHTGR dynamics has high nonlinearity, it is necessary to develop nonlinear power-level controller which is not only beneficial to the safe, stable, efficient and autonomous operation of the MHTGR but also easy to be implemented 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 provides globally asymptotic closed-loop stability. Numerical simulation results verify the theoretical results and show the influence of the controller parameters to the dynamic response.