Power Control System Design for a Heat Pipe Cooled Reactor

Abstract

Due to the small size, the high-power density and the strong environmental adaptability, the heat pipe cooled reactor has a broad application prospect in the fields of space exploration, underwater vehicle power system and other fields[1]. It will be one of the subversive technologies which will change the future nuclear power development. The safe operation of the heat pipe cooled reactor requires an effective power control system. 3KeyMaster is a comprehensive real-time simulation analysis platform and the control system can be built by using its logic module. The interface program can be developed in its task program, and other program can be integrated in this platform[2]. The system program of the heat pipe cooled reactor has compiled as a dynamic linking library. Through the task program of the 3KeyMaster simulation platform to call the dynamic linking library by using C++ program, the system program is coupled with the 3KeyMaster simulation platform. The modules of 3KeyMaster platform exchange data with the system program by shared memory. Through the responses of the temperature due to step change in the reactor power obtained by 3KeyMaster, the transfer functions are obtained by using the system identification module in MATLAB & Simulink. The power disturbance is introduced, and simulation is carried out on the 3KeyMaster. The changes of the important parameters are analyzed to obtain its dynamic characteristics. Based on the dynamic analysis on the system responses, the control strategy for the power control system is proposed. The power control system is implemented in MATLAB & Simulink. The control system parameters are tuned to determine a group of suitable control parameters[3]. Finally, the control performance of power control system is evaluated by simulations.