A fractional PID controller based on fractional point kinetic model and particle swarm optimization for power regulation of SMART reactor

•A Fractional and classical point kinetic models are developed for SMART reactor.•The developed model is verified in rod ejection accident.•A Fractional order PID (FOPID) control system for power level is proposed.•The FOPID is tuned by ABC, GWO, and PSO optimization algorithms.•Nichols chart is used to evaluate the robust stability. The small modular reactor tends to drive down the price of electricity and heat, installed far from the national power grid. In order to provide the active power balance in small networks in fluctuating power demand, the output power of the reactor should be regulated. In this paper, a reactor core model for Korean integral-type small reactor, SMART, is proposed and verified in a rod ejection accident. A fractional controller intended to regulate the reactor power to chase the power demand. The particle swarm optimization has been carried out to minimize a certain cost function for step response of the original nonlinear plant. Simulation results show the excellent tracking of the desired output with practical control rod velocity and reactivity. The framework provided for the design of the FOPID shows the robust stability in the Nichols chart.