Title :
A Design and Implementation of a Fault-Tolerant Rod Control System for Nuclear Power Plants
Author :
Kwon, Soonman ; Cheon, Jong-Min ; Lee, Jongmoo ; Kim, Choon-Kyung ; Kim, Seog-Joo
Author_Institution :
Korea Electrotechnol. Res. Inst.
Abstract :
The design and implementation of a fault-tolerant control rod control system for nuclear power plants is described. High reliability and safety are necessary for the instrumentation and control systems for safety-critical plants such as nuclear power plants. For a control rod control system that controls the nuclear reactivity inside the reactor by inserting or withdrawing the rods into or from the reactor, the reliability is more critical than the safety since its malfunction directly results in an unexpected shutdown of the power plant. This paper deals with a design and implementation practice to enhance the reliability of the control system. The reliability enhancement is basically achieved by adopting hardware redundancy in its structure. The reliability is evaluated quantitatively to check if the designed and implemented system is reliable enough to be applied to commercial plants. The ability of fault detection realized in the system is expected to give a further reliability enhancement by means of software. The bumpless control problem that can be arisen from adopting hardware redundancy is discussed here. Also a new algorithm for the rod movement detection is briefly introduced and demonstrated with a test result
Keywords :
control system synthesis; fault tolerance; nuclear power stations; power generation reliability; power station control; control system reliability; fault-tolerant control rod control system; nuclear power plants; nuclear reactivity control; rod movement detection; safety-critical plants; Control systems; Fault detection; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Inductors; Power generation; Power system reliability; Reactor instrumentation; Redundancy; Safety;
Conference_Titel :
Industrial Electronics, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Montreal, Que.
Print_ISBN :
1-4244-0496-7
Electronic_ISBN :
1-4244-0497-5
DOI :
10.1109/ISIE.2006.295868