A Study on the Enhancement of Westinghouse DNB Protection Logic

Since the conventional Westinghouse DNB (Departure from Nucleate Boiling) protection logic is implemented on analog circuits, the logic must be very simple. However, if the DNB protection logic is implemented in a digital processor, a little bit of complexity can be allowed to increase the thermal (or operation) margin. The Westinghouse OTΔT DNB protection logic heavily restricts the operation region by applying the same logic for a full range of pressure in order to maintain its simplicity. In this work, the different DNB protection logic is used for several regions of pressure. The proposed method is applied to Yonggwang 1&2 nuclear power plants and it is calculated that the improved OTΔT can have 5.07% percent more thermal margin than the conventional OTΔT trip logic.