An eigenvalue sensitivity study of a high temperature gas cooled reactor system

This paper discusses the application of an eigenvalue sensitivity method1 to a linear, time-invariant, model of the High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) manufactured by General Atomic. It is shown that for this type of system with distinct eigenvalues, a relation can be obtained between the solutions to the classical sansitivity equation and the eigenvalue and eigenvector sensitivities. This relation indicates that the eigenvalue and eigenvector sensitivities are more fundamental indicators of parametric effects than the solutions of the sensitivity equation. A FORTRAN program (SENSIT) was developed to implement the algorithms required for eigenvalue sensitivity calculations. This program was applied to a large scale (58 state) linear time invariant model of the HTGR operating under closed loop control.