Bifurcation analysis of the simplified models of boiling water reactor and identification of global stability boundary

Nonlinear stability study of the neutron coupled thermal hydraulics instability has been carried out by several researchers for boiling water reactors (BWRs). The focus of these studies has been to identify subcritical and supercritical Hopf bifurcations. Supercritical Hopf bifurcation are soft or safe due to the fact that stable limit cycles arise in linearly unstable region; linear and global stability boundaries are same for this bifurcation. It is well known that the subcritical bifurcations can be considered as hard or dangerous due to the fact that unstable limit cycles (nonlinear phenomena) exist in the (linearly) stable region. The linear stability leads to a stable equilibrium in such regions, only for infinitesimally small perturbations. However, finite perturbations lead to instability due to the presence of unstable limit cycles. Therefore, it is evident that the linear stability analysis is not sufficient to understand the exact stability characteristics of BWRs. However, the effect of these bifurcations on the stability boundaries has been rarely discussed. In the present work, the identification of global stability boundary is demonstrated using simplified models. Here, five different models with different thermal hydraulics feedback have been investigated. In comparison to the earlier works, current models also include the impact of adding the rate of change in temperature on void reactivity as well as effect of void reactivity on rate of change of temperature. Using the bifurcation analysis of these models the globally stable region in the parameter space has been identified. The globally stable region has only stable solutions and does not have even unstable limit cycles. Hence, the system is stable irrespective of the size of the perturbation in these regions.