A Study On Intelligent Control Of PWR Power During The NPP’s Load Following Operations

In our nation, the modern large-scale nuclear power plants (NPP) are contributing m oreand more electricity to the power load of the local power supply systems. Load followingoperation for NPP to participate in adjusting electricity peak of power transmission networkmay obtain very good social and economic effect. During the load following operation of theNPP, it’s critical to control the reactor core power.The first half of this paper is based on quoting the means of predecessor’s research fruitsto demonstrate the fact that3D core power distribution of the reactor can be reconstructed byusing information from ex-core neutron detection. This thesis aims to study the PWR(Pressurized-Water Reactor) core power changing characteristics when the NPP works at loadfollowing operation, using the data from ex-core neutron detectors to judge the core dynamics.A way has been developed in the study by using artificial Neural Network to set up anintelligent reactor core model to simulate the3-dimensional power distribution of the reactorcore. To investigate the validity and validate the precision as well as to find out the workingcondition of the intelligent core model, this paper has conducted a series of experiments usingTen Groups of data which were collected from NPP’s simulation system. Those experimentshave given good results on the behavior of simulating the3D core power distribution.The second half of this paper summarizes the control means of PWR core power duringNPP’s load following operation, and offers a detailed analysis by pointing out somedraw-backs in modern PWR core power control system. Then, base on the intelligent coremodel built in the first half of this paper, theoretically, precepts for the power control meansof NPP’s reactor core have been optimized during NPP’s load following operation. To certainextent, those precepts have been reduced the over margin of safety and the probability of hotspot emergence.At last, the study figures out some promising fields for deeper research in the future,which can help to develop more advanced load following control system, so as to improve thesafety and economy of the PWR power plants.