Novel active disturbance rejection control law design for nuclear reactor power level control in load following operation

• This paper presents a novel Active Disturbance Rejection Control Law design for nuclear reactor power level control in load following operation. • The proposed ADRC, a model free controller, is different from the conventional one. • The proposed ADRC demonstrates significant improvements in system robustness by effectively handling both matched and unmatched disturbances. • The performance of the ADRC controller is validated through simulation results, demonstrating its superiority in terms of power regulation and disturbance rejection when benchmarked against existing control techniques in nuclear reactor power level control. Nuclear reactors are inherently complex systems characterized by significant nonlinearities. Additionally, their operational characteristics evolve over time due to factors such as power levels, aging effects, internal reactivity feedbacks, and fuel burn-up. Given this complexity and variability, nuclear reactors require advanced and highly sophisticated control strategies to ensure both optimal performance and safety throughout their operational lifespan. This paper introduces the design of a novel Active Disturbance Rejection Controller (ADRC) tailored specifically for the load-following process in nuclear reactors. The newly built controller is different from the existing ADRC and not only ensuring closed-loop asymptotic stability but also providing robustness against disturbances. The control performance of the developed ADRC law is assessed through numerical simulation where it has been compared with the traditional Linear ADRC (LADRC) and Model Free Controller (MFC) to show its superiority. It has been demonstrated that the proposed controller can achieve satisfactory tracking performance while rejecting both matched and lumped disturbances.