Title: Proprietary electronics for reactor safety and controls

Authors: Shantanu Das, Bibhuranjan Basudeb Biswas

Addresses: Reactor Control Division, BARC, Mumbai 400085, India. ' Reactor Control Division, BARC, Mumbai 400085, India

Abstract: India was one of the first countries in the world to have realised a computer-based reactor protection system. It was in the late 1980s when fully fledged microprocessor-based reactor protection units were commissioned for research and then for power reactors. Since then the proprietary philosophy, applied to have proprietary electronics in reactor protection and control, has expanded to include a dozen nuclear power reactors. What we get from proprietary electronics, as much as reasonably achievable, are online fault coverage and fail-safe features, which are not available in commercial electronics. From design to fabrication and then maintainability, the process is traceable, controllable and sustainable. Therefore the entire modular electronics is proprietary and not commercial. The record of plant availability for the last two decades for the dozen reactors speaks for it. Conservation of signal properties and T-states, along with proprietary fault diagnostic features make the system truly robust.

Keywords: signal property conservation; output read-back; minimum logic energy expenditure; fail-safe; online set point servo; finite impulse testing; M+N redundancy; India; proprietary electronics; reactor safety; reactor controls; nuclear energy; nuclear power; reactor protection; nuclear safety; modular electronics; fault diagnosis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNEST.2007.017076

International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, 2007 Vol.3 No.4, pp.358 - 369

Published online: 06 Feb 2008 *

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