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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Latest News
What’s the most difficult question you’ve been asked as a maintenance instructor?
Blye Widmar
"Where are the prints?!"
This was the final question in an onslaught of verbal feedback, comments, and critiques I received from my students back in 2019. I had two years of instructor experience and was teaching a class that had been meticulously rehearsed in preparation for an accreditation visit. I knew the training material well and transferred that knowledge effectively enough for all the students to pass the class. As we wrapped up, I asked the students how they felt about my first big system-level class, and they did not hold back.
“Why was the exam from memory when we don’t work from memory in the plant?” “Why didn’t we refer to the vendor documents?” “Why didn’t we practice more on the mock-up?” And so on.
Derjew Ayele Ejigu, Xiaojing Liu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 6 | June 2023 | Pages 1239-1254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2138688
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a system of several integrated components such as the core, steam generator, hot leg, cold leg, and plenums. The subsystems consist of critical parameters and malfunctions that cause potential accidents. Therefore, a PWR requires a control system for safe and stable operation over its lifetime. In this study, the state-space model of the PWR core is established and validated with published work. Then, a beetle antenna search (BAS) algorithm–optimized radial basis function (RBF) neural network proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control (BAS-RBF-PID) strategy is proposed to regulate the core power. The BAS-RBF-PID control approach computes the control input to optimize the PWR core output power to track the reference command. The integral absolute error and integral time absolute error criterion functions are used to measure the control performance. The sensitivity of the control input on the PWR output is examined through the Jacobian, and the stability is analyzed by using the Lyapunov approach and Nichols chart. The simulation results verified that the PWR core output power chased the reference command smoothly as compared with the BAS-PID and PID strategies with good performance. This confirms that the control signal optimizes the core power effectively. This study gives the benefit to apply the BAS-RBF-PID algorithm in other nuclear engineering fields for control purposes.
