I understand in a general term how a reactor works, but I was wondering whether they are highly automated or not. Such as do humans control thing such as fuel and coolant flow rates?
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2$\begingroup$ How general is general? ;) What research have you done on this topic? Eg, you could link the Wikipedia articles that you've read about it. $\endgroup$– PM 2RingCommented Sep 15, 2019 at 15:48
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$\begingroup$ nuclear-power.net/sitemap-nuclear-power I have mostly read about each individual component on this website, I also do A-level physics so I only really know the basics. So I was wondering whether a human would add more fuel and lower control rods or if a computer handled all of that? $\endgroup$– Joel staceyCommented Sep 15, 2019 at 17:26
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$\begingroup$ Ok, that looks like a pretty comprehensive website. ;) This site is good for pure physics questions, but for practical engineering matters, our Engineering sister site is probably better. $\endgroup$– PM 2RingCommented Sep 15, 2019 at 18:15
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$\begingroup$ But FWIW, modern reactors certainly use state of the art monitoring & control technology; OTOH, computers were still very primitive, rare, and expensive when the first generations of nuclear reactors were built. $\endgroup$– PM 2RingCommented Sep 15, 2019 at 18:16
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1 Answer
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The control systems in modern reactors are highly automated as are all the safety backup systems that are there to prevent the reactor from going out of control in case of a failure or accident. The days of having humans manually pulling on control rods are long gone. A human operator can adjust the power output of a reactor up and down to meet demand fluctuations but that adjustment automatically invokes a whole series of nested and embedded control loops that tweak all the control variables within the system as a whole.
Posting this question on the engineering stack exchange will probably net you more details, but be aware that this is an extremely complicated topic about which entire upper division engineering programs are assembled.
answered Sep 15, 2019 at 18:39