Dynamics and control of nuclear reactors

There has been a renewed interest in nuclear power reactors in recent years, as electricity generation is possible without the need for continous refueling. All studies about nuclear energy fields that are made in the World, are reckoned as safety-critical level applications. Hence, when the nuclear systems are being modeled, the real behaviour of the system dynamics must be taken into consideration. With this in mind, nuclear kinetics, fuel/coolant temperature feedback, reactivity introduced by control rod movements and reactor dynamics are added to the system. Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) physical system is modeled mathematically by using specified dynamic equations. System includes non-linear components and shows unstable behaviours on equilibrium point. In the workflow, stability of the reactor power, fuel temperature, moderator temperature are enhanced by developing a controller for the system. For this target, modeling of the control rods being inserted into reactor core or withdrawn from the reactor core is done. Therefore, nuclear power, reactivity, temperature changes of the fuel and coolant are taken into control with the movement of the control rods in order to exhibit stable responses.