The advanced liquid metal reactor: Towards component protection based automatic control

As advanced computing technology becomes part of the control system for power plants, the opportunity arises to address the real goals of plant control. Digital control systems are able to monitor more information and to accomplish more simultaneous tasks than human operators. In future nuclear plants, intelligent supervisory control systems should be responsible for maneuvering the plant in a fashion to minimize the component stress damage. The control system should generate strategies based on traditional operational objectives and on the current plant state and the stress history of various components and transients. In this paper, the authors elaborate on the desirability of including component mechanical stress information in digital control systems. Explicit consideration of stress constraints in the control strategy can significantly reduce the impact of transients on critical components, providing a significant contribution towards meeting current lifetime design goals of approximately 60 years. For illustration, one of the Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor design duty cycles events is discussed from this perspective for three hypothetical response scenarios. 7 refs., 4 figs