As one of Generation IV nuclear reactor designs, the molten salt reactor is capable of load-following via passive temperature feedback effect. However, to be able to effectively track output power with solely the temperature feedback, it generally works with a slow load-changing rate and at the cost of increased thermal stress on vessel materials, which is not ideal. In this work, a first-principles-driven (FPD) control-oriented model is proposed to describe the reactor power and temperature evolution in the molten salt reactor in response to the control rod movement. The proposed model is then tailored based on the TMSR-LF1 design parameters. The model's prediction capabilities are demonstrated by comparing predictions with simulation data from RELAP5 code. The FPD model is then used to design a cascade controller, where the master and slave controllers are used to regulate the average temperature of the reactor core and the reactor power respectively. Simulation results illustrate the capability of the proposed cascade controller in tracking the desired operating temperature and reactor power level in presence of various disturbances.

cascade control,reactor dynamics,molten salt reactor,TMSR-LF1