Control Study for Automatic Startup of a Pressurized Water Reactor Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract To improve the automation for the startup process of a pressurizer water reactor (PWR) nuclear power plant (NPP), reduce the work intensity of the reactor operator, shorten the startup time, and improve the correctness and standardization of the process, the automatic control of NPP startup process is studied in this paper. First, the control scope and the requirements of automatic startup control system are analyzed and studied based on the characteristics and the operation management process of PWR NPP. Aiming at the current manual control tasks, three realization control methods are proposed, including sequence control, traditional closed loop control and advanced algorithm. A simulation platform for automatic startup system of typical PWR NPP was established based on 3KeyMaster, Relap5, and MATLAB/Simulink. Two typical manual control processes in state 3 for the startup process are selected to design the automatic control system based on PI controller and fuzzy controller respectively, and the simulation tests are carried out. The simulation results show that the designed control systems can realize the automatic control of the processes. Compared with the manual control, the control performance is improved, and the operation steps and work burden of operator are reduced. This study can provide a reference for the design of automatic startup and shutdown control system, and it is of great significance for improving the automation of startup and shutdown process of PWR NPP.