Monitoring a gas-cooled nuclear reactor core integrity

This work concerns with the problem of monitoring an Advanced Gas-cooled Nuclear Reactor (AGR) core. In the world wide context of energy production, the advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) nuclear power stations are approaching the end of their predicted operational live. Currently, it has been proposed to extend the operational lifetime of the nuclear plants if the distortions of the reactor cores are not as severe as initially predicted, and if it is possible to prove that the reactors are still safe to operate. The purpose of this work is to present a monitoring system based on analytical redundancy and directional residual generation using measurements obtained during the refueling process. In short this problem consists of building an unknown input observer with the role to estimate the friction force produced by the interaction between the wall of the fuel channel and the fuel assembly. This let to estimate the shape of the graphite bricks that comprise the core and, therefore, monitor any distortion of them.