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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Chaung Lin, Chih-Ming Shen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 132 | Number 3 | December 2000 | Pages 389-402
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-4
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neurocontrol technique was applied to control a pressurized water reactor (PWR) in load-follow operations. Generalized learning or direct inverse control architecture was adopted in which the neural network was trained off-line to learn the inverse model of the PWR. Two neural network controllers were designed: One provided control rod position, which controlled the axial power distribution, and the other provided the change in boron concentration, which adjusted core total power. An additional feedback controller was designed so that power tracking capability was improved. The time duration between control actions was 15 min; thus, the xenon effect is limited and can be neglected. Therefore, the xenon concentration was not considered as a controller input variable, which simplified controller design. Center target strategy and minimum boron strategy were used to operate the reactor, and the simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness and performance of the proposed controller.