Estimate of coolant flow in assemblies of a natural circulation BWR applying and equivalent electric model

The present work exposes the design and implementation of an advanced controller that it allows to estimate the coolant flow in fuel assemblies of a natural circulation BWR in real time. the complete development of this study is part of a doctoral project in course. In this work the construction of optimal controller is shown that allows to estimate the coolant flows in reactor and its operation applied to an equivalent electric model to natural circulation ESBWR. The controller design that allows the completely automatic starter of natural circulation reactor, required of a variables estimator not meter directly of nuclear power plant and use of local distributions estimates of coolant flow, (this controller type at the moment is utilized in the A BWR and several BWR in operation in Japan). The construction of estimator controller is mathematically based in the theory referring to Kalman filter, whose algorithm provides an advanced control of system. To prove the estimator operation was developed a simplified model that reproduces the basic dynamic of coolant flowing in the ESBWR, a practice way and very interesting of representing this phenomenon is by means the use of an equivalent electric model, which was developed starting from analogies that there is among the relation that keep the pressure differences with the mass flow and differences of electric potential with electric current. A detailed analysis of equivalence among models will be presented in a later article. (Author)