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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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DOE-NE’s newest fuel consortium includes defense from antitrust laws
The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy is setting up a nuclear fuel Defense Production Act Consortium that will seek voluntary agreements with interested companies “to increase fuel availability, provide more access to reliable power, and end America’s reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and critical materials needed to power the nation’s nuclear renaissance.” According to an August 22 DOE press release, the plan invokes the Defense Production Act (DPA) to give consortium members “defense from antitrust laws when certain criteria are met” and “allow industry consultation to develop plans of action.” DOE-NE is looking for interested companies to join the consortium ahead of its first meeting, scheduled for October 14.
Gokhan Corak, James A. Turso, Kenan Ünlu (Penn State)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 618-628
The safe and effective control of nuclear reactors is of significant interest to the research reactor community and nuclear power utility industry. Numerous advanced control algorithms have demonstrated superior reactor control over the past several decades – primarily on simulated reactors. Among these, state feedback control has been applied to virtually every type of dynamic system. This paper focuses on developing an accurate model of the Penn State TRIGA Reactor simulation and creating a state feedback controller/state observer design using self-powered Vanadium and Rhodium neutron detectors (SPND) as feedback sensors. This work is the first attempt to use these type of sensors in a closed-loop feedback system for reactor control. The foundation of the equations in Simulink has been derived from normalized point kinetics equations and core averaged thermal-hydraulic equations. The self-powered detector dynamics may be developed from basic activation/decay balance differential equations. Results demonstrate that the TRIGA Simulink model developed compares well with the actual TRIGA Reactor data. Self-powered neutron detectors are well-suited to monitor steady-state reactor power. Due to their dependence on radioactive decay after irradiation to produce a current signal, self-powered detectors have significant delay times associated with them, making them inadequate for real-time feedback control. The long delay associated with the normal detector models can only realistically be used for applications where this delay can be tolerated, such as post-accident power monitoring. A major contribution of this paper is the development and application of detector inverse models, which null-out delays introduced by the physics of the detector. Results demonstrate that the inverse detector models have no delay which is desirable for the reactor closed-loop control. SPNDs need no external power to produce current levels consistent with ion chambers and may prove to be a vital component for closed-loop nuclear reactor control in the future. The successful application of an advanced control algorithm i.e., state-feedback control with self-powered neutron detectors, demonstrates that this technology may be applied in closed-loop nuclear reactor control and safety systems not only for power plant applications but for applications such as space nuclear reactors as well.