Control of the pressurized water nuclear reactors power using optimized proportional – integral – derivative controller with particle swarm optimization algorithm

Various controllers such as proportionaleintegralederivative (PID) controllers have been designed andoptimized for load-following issues in nuclear reactors. To achieve high performance, gain tuning is ofgreat importance in PID controllers. In this work, gains of a PID controller are optimized for power-levelcontrol of a typical pressurized water reactor using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Thepoint kinetic is used as a reactor power model. In PSO, the objective (cost) function defined by decisionvariables including overshoot, settling time, and stabilization time (stability condition) must be minimized(optimized). Stability condition is guaranteed by Lyapunov synthesis. The simulation resultsdemonstrated good stability and high performance of the closed-loop PSOePID controller to responsepower demand