Module Coordination Control of MHTGR-Based Multi-Modular Nuclear Plants

Based on the multi-modular scheme, modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) can be used to build large-scale nuclear power plants with inherent safety feature at any desired power ratings. It is so clear that module coordinated control is very crucial for the safe and stable operation of multi-modular MHTGR plants, which induces the importance of the study in module coordination. Motivated by this, it is revealed in this paper that coordinated control of multiple MHTGR-based NSSS modules is essentially the flowrate-pressure regulation of a fluid flow network (FFN). A novel pressure-flowrate control with the proportional-integral (PI) form is then proposed for the FFN that couples
$N$
MHTGR-based NSSS modules. This control provides the input-to-state stability (ISS) of the closed-loop system. Numerical simulation results not only verify the theoretic results but also show the satisfactory control performance.