Nonlinear Power-Level Control of the MHTGR Only with the Feedback Loop of Helium Temperature

Power-level control is a crucial technique for the safe, stable and efficient operation of modular high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors (MHTGRs), which have strong inherent safety features and high outlet temperatures. The current power-level controllers of the MHTGRs need measurements of both the nuclear power and the helium temperature, which cannot provide satisfactory control performance and can even induce large oscillations when the neutron sensors are in error. In order to improve the fault tolerance of the control system, it is important to develop a power-level control strategy that only requires the helium temperature. The basis for developing this kind of control law is to give a state-observer of the MHTGR a relationship that only needs the measurement of helium temperature. With this in mind, a novel nonlinear state observer which only needs the measurement of helium temperature is proposed. This observer is globally convergent if there is no disturbance, and has the <i>L</i>₂ disturbance attenuation performance if the disturbance is nonzero. The separation principle of this observer is also proven, which denotes that this observer can recover the performance of both globally asymptotic stabilizers and <i>L</i>₂ disturbance attenuators. Then, a new dynamic output feedback power-level control strategy is established, which is composed of this observer and the well-built static state-feedback power-level control based upon iterative dissipation assignment (IDA-PLC). Finally, numerical simulation results show the high performance and feasibility of this newly-built dynamic output feedback power-level controller.