Development of advanced I&C in nuclear power plants: ADIOS and ASICS Original Research Article

In this paper Automatic Startup Intelligent Control System (ASICS) that automatically controls the PWR plant from cold shutdown to 5% of reactor power and Alarm and Diagnosis-Integrated Operator Support System (ADIOS) that is integrated with alarms, process values, and diagnostic information to an expert system focused on alarm processing are described. Nuclear Power Plant is manually controlled from cold shutdown to 5% according to the general operation procedures for startup operation of nuclear power plant. Alarm information is the primary sources to detect abnormalities in nuclear power plants or other process plants. The conventional hardwired alarm systems, characterized by one sensor-one indicator may lead the control room operators to be confused with avalanching alarms during plant transients. ASICS and ADIOS are designed to reduce the operator burden. The advances in computer software and hardware technology and also in information processing provide a good opportunity to improve the control systems and the annunciator systems of nuclear power plants or other similar process plants. It is very important to test and evaluate the performance and the function of the computer- or software-based systems like ASICS and ADIOS. The performance and the function of ASICS and ADIOS are evaluated with the real-time functional test facility and the results have shown that the developed systems are efficient and useful for operation and operator support.