IMPROVING REGIONAL OVERPOWER PROTECTION TRIP SET POINT VIA CHANNEL OPTIMIZATION

In recent years, a new algorithm has been introduced to perform the regional overpower protection (ROP) detector layout optimization for $CANDU^{(R)}$ reactors. This algorithm is called DETPLASA. This algorithm has been shown to successfully come up with a detector layout which meets the target trip set point (TSP) value. Knowing that these ROP detectors are placed in a number of safety channels, one expects that there is an optimal placement of the candidate detectors into these channels. The objective of the present paper is to show that a slight improvement to the TSP value can be realized by optimizing the channelization of these ROP detectors. Depending on the size of the ROP system, based on numerical experiments performed in this study, the range of additional TSP improvement is from 0.16%FP (full power) to 0.56%FP.