ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
Westinghouse teams with Nordion and PSEG to produce Co-60 at Salem
Westinghouse Electric Company, Nordion, and PSEG Nuclear announced on Tuesday the signing of long-term agreements to establish the first commercial-scale production of cobalt-60 in a U.S. nuclear reactor. Under the agreements, the companies are to apply newly developed production technology for pressurized water reactors to produce Co-60 at PSEG’s Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey.
Jiuwu Hui
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 8 | August 2025 | Pages 1699-1722
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2426410
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accurate estimation of unmeasured system states and disturbances in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) is essential for effective control, operation optimization, and safety monitoring. To this end, this paper investigates the estimation of unmeasured system states and disturbances of the PWR system during load-following operation. First, a mathematical model for the PWR system is established based on the two-point kinetics equations with one equivalent delayed neutron precursor group. Subsequently, an extended state observer (ESO) integration scheme, incorporating two coupled ESOs, is constructed to estimate unmeasured system states, including relative density of delayed neutron precursor, average fuel temperature, total reactivity, xenon concentration, and iodine concentration, along with time-varying disturbances, with the use of measurements of the PWR system only. According to the Lyapunov stability theorem, it is proved that the estimation error dynamic of the proposed ESO integration scheme is uniformly ultimately bounded stable. Finally, simulation results confirm that the proposed ESO integration scheme provides higher estimation accuracy and stronger robustness against measurement noises, model uncertainties, and external disturbances compared to both a high-gain observer and a high-order sliding mode observer.