Power control of CiADS core with the intensity of the proton beam

Abstract This paper reports the control method for the core power of the China initiative Accelerator Driven System (CiADS) facility. In the CiADS facility, an intense external neutron source provided by a proton accelerator coupled to a spallation target is used to drive a sub-critical reactor. Without any control rod inside the sub-critical reactor, the core power is controlled by adjusting the proton beam intensity. In order to continuously change the beam intensity, an adjustable aperture is considered to be used at the Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) line of the accelerator. The aperture size is adjusted based on the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers, by comparing either the setting beam intensity or the setting core power with the measured value. To evaluate the proposed control method, a CiADS core model is built based on the point reactor kinetics model with six delayed neutron groups. The simulations based on the CiADS core model have indicated that the core power can be controlled stably by adjusting the aperture size. The response time in the adjustment of the core power depends mainly on the adjustment time of the beam intensity.