A modeling and control approach to advanced nuclear power plants with gas turbines

•Load frequency control strategies in nuclear plants are researched.•Nuclear reactor-centered control system may not be suitable for load control.•Local unit controllers improve stability and overall time constant.•Coolant loops in nuclear plants should be controlled locally.

Advanced nuclear power plants are currently being proposed with a number of various designs. However, there is a lack of modeling and control strategies to deal with load following operations. This research investigates a possible modeling approach and load following control strategy for gas turbine nuclear power plants in order to provide an assessment way to the concept designs. A load frequency control strategy and average temperature control mechanism are studied to get load following nuclear power plants. The suitability of the control strategies and concept designs are assessed through linear stability analysis methods. Numerical results are presented on an advanced molten salt reactor concept as an example nuclear power plant system to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed modeling and load following control strategies.