Digital control for nuclear reactors - lessons learned

Lessons learned during the course of the now decade-old MIT program on the digital control of nuclear reactors are enumerated. Relative to controller structure, these include the importance of a separate safety system, the need for signal validation, the role of supervisory algorithms, the significance of command validation, and the relevance of automated reasoning. Relative to controller implementation, these include the value of nodal methods to the creation of real-time reactor physics and thermal hydraulic models, the advantages to be gained from the use of real-time system models, and the importance of a multi-tiered structure to the simultaneous achievement of supervisory, global, and local control. Block diagrams are presented of proposed controllers and selected experimental and simulation-study results are shown. In addition, a history is given of the MIT program on reactor digital control