A Study on Design of the Trip Computer for ECC System Based on Dynamic Safety System

  • Published : 2000.08.01

Abstract

The Emergency Core Cooling System in current nuclear power plants typically has a considerable number of complex functions and largely cumbersome operator interfaces. Functions for initiation, switch-over between various phases of operation, interlocks, monitoring, and alarming are usually performed by relays and analog comparator logic which are difficult to maintain and test. To improve problems of an analog based ECC (Emergency Core Cooling) System, the trip computer for ECCS based on Dynamic Safety System (DSS) is implemented. The DSS is a computer based reactor protection system that has fail-safe nature and performs a dynamic self-testing. The most important feature of the DSS is the introduction of test signal that send the system into a tripped state. The test signals are interleaved with the plant signals to produce an output which switches between a tripped and health state. The dynamic operation is a key feature of the failsafe design of the system. In this work, a possible implementation of the DSS using PLC is presented for a CANDU Reactor. ECC System of the CANDU Reactor is selected as the reference system.

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References

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