Modeling and control strategy of the China accelerator driven subcritical reactor

•A zero-dimensional model for the reactor for CLEAR-IB was developed.•A PI controller was designed to keep the power following the set value.•A control strategy was adopted to control the inlet temperature of core.•Dynamic simulation of the whole system was performed.

To investigate the dynamic and control characteristics of the CLEAR-IB plant, a new lead bismuth eutectic (LBE)-cooled Accelerator Driven Subcritical reactor, a model for the main components of the reactor and the most relevant interactions among them are developed. The system is comprised of the primary cooling circuit with LBE, the secondary cooling circuit with water and the associated air cooling system for an effective rejection of thermal power to the environment as a final heat sink. A Proportional-Integral (PI) controller is designed to keep the power following the set value as quickly as possible. To keep the coolant temperature at the inlet of the core constant, a control strategy based on a simultaneous feed-forward and feedback scheme has been adopted. Based on the developed model and control strategy, dynamic simulation of the whole system with controllers in the case of a load step change is performed. The simulation results show that the proposed model is sufficiently accurate to describe the dynamic behaviors of the plant in spite of its simplicity and the developed controllers for the CLEAR-IB can provide superior reactor control capabilities due to the efficiency of the control strategy adopted.