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Godzilla is helping ITER prepare for tokamak assembly
ITER employees stand by Godzilla, the most powerful commercially available industrial robot available. (Photo: ITER)
Many people are familiar with Godzilla as a giant reptilian monster that emerged from the sea off the coast of Japan, the product of radioactive contamination. These days, there is a new Godzilla, but it has a positive—and entirely fact-based—association with nuclear energy. This one has emerged inside the Tokamak Assembly Preparation Building of ITER in southern France.
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.