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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Katsuo Suzuki, Junya Shimazaki, Yoshikuni Shinohara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 115 | Number 2 | October 1993 | Pages 142-151
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE92-112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The H∞ control theory is applied to the compensator design of a nonlinear nuclear reactor model, and the results are compared with standard linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control. The reactor model is assumed to be provided with a control rod drive system having the compensation of rod position feedback. The nonlinearity of the reactor model exerts a great influence on the stability of the control system, and hence, it is desirable for a power control system of a nuclear reactor to achieve robust stability and to improve the sensitivity of the feedback control system. A computer simulation based on a power control system synthesized by LQG control was performed revealing that the control system has some stationary offset and less stability. Therefore, here, attention is given to the development of a methodology for robust control that can withstand exogenous disturbances and nonlinearity in view of system parameter changes. The developed methodology adopts H∞ control theory in the feedback system and shows interesting features of robustness. The results of the computer simulation indicate that the feedback control system constructed by the developed H∞ compensator possesses sufficient robustness of control on the stability and disturbance attenuation, which are essential for the safe operation of a nuclear reactor.