State Feedback Assisted Classical Control: An Incremental Approach to Control Modernization of Existing and Future Nuclear Reactors and Power Plants

A new control concept, state feedback assisted classical control, is described. The concept incorporates a classical output feedback control system as an easily understood inner control loop and casts modern state feedback in the role of a demand signal augmentation to achieve the goals of an optimal control design. The new control configuration is proposed as a method to achieve transparency of control for implementation of optimal control theory for nuclear reactors and power plants. It may find acceptance for incremental modernization of existing plants because it may permit existing control loops to remain in place while new control loops are added to optionally augment demand signals to achieve an optimal control objective. This approach also leads into the design of robust and fault-tolerant control of nuclear power plants.