Recent Applications of Smart Instrumentation in Nuclear Power Plants

The designation "smart instrumentation" comprises four different but complementary types of new developments in measurement and control technology: 1) the utilization of micro- and minicomputer technology to increase the speed, reliability, and accuracy of data acquisition, processing, and interpretation; 2) the use of more complex, sophisticated, higher technology measurement techniques to acquire information about physical phenomena; 3) the use of computer technology to automate the measurement by emulating the human and thereby removing him from the process; and 4) the use of advanced information theory techniques to extract more information from sensed phenomena by extending the threshold of detection or the breadth of comprehension. For each of these four categories this paper presents an example of recent nuclear power plant applications of smart instrumentation technology.