Integrated robust and resilient control for nuclear power plants

Development and deployment of small-scale nuclear power reactors and their autonomous control and monitoring is part of the mission under the Global Energy Partnership (GNEP) program. The goals for this project are to investigate, develop, and validate advanced methods for sensing, controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing the proposed small and medium sized export reactors (SMR) and apply it to the International Reactor Innovative & Secure (IRIS). The role of a robust controller is to enhance insensitivity of the control system to exogenous disturbance, internal fault, and uncertainties in the plant. The role of a resilient controller is to enhance recovery of the control system from unanticipated adverse conditions and faults as well as from emergency situations by altering its operational envelop in real time. This paper addresses the issues of real-time resilient control of nuclear power plants for fast response during emergency operations while the features of the existing robust control are retained during normal operating conditions- steady state and transient. The goal is to formulate and validate resilient and reconfigurable control algorithms toward deployment of real-time controllers for emergency recovery of the nuclear power plant from expected and unexpected adverse condition. This paper demonstrates integrated robust and resilient control for the International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS) nuclear power plant.