Design of power control system for automatic operation of the Kartini reactor

Abstract

Kartini research reactor which is located at Yogyakarta Indonesia is intended for research, education and training. Students from universities around the city use the reactor for experiments regularly. Regarding the plan of building the first nuclear power plant in Indonesia, the reactor could be improved as the facility of a nuclear power simulator for personnel training of a nuclear power plant. Some improvements on instrumentation and control system were conducted to support the purpose, such as developments of data acquisition of reactor operation parameters, and internet reactor laboratory for remote experiment through the internet connection. However, a power control system for the automatic operation of the reactor is not developed yet. It is important to design an automatic power control for the improvement of the reactor as a simulator of a light-water nuclear power plant. This paper discusses the design of power control of the Kartini reactor based on the Kartini reactor accident and transient code. The control model refers to that of a light water-cooled nuclear power plant. Calculation results show that the control model is applicable to the Kartini reactor. The criterion of SCRAM actuation of the Kartini reactor is satisfied by a small value (0.1) of a control parameter of b. In the future, the control rod simulator which is available in the Kartini reactor might be used to simulate the control system before it is realized to the real reactor.