History of OnLine Calibration Monitoring Developments in Nuclear Power Plants

1
History of On-Line Calibration Monitoring
Developments in Nuclear Power Plants
2
What is On-Line?

• Instrumentation is in normal configuration for
  service
• Plant is operating (including startup, normal
  operating conditions, and during shutdown)
• Passive testing from a remote location

3
Goal of On-Line Monitoring

• Use existing signals from existing sensors to
  verify the performance of sensors and the process

4
History of On-Line Monitoring in Nuclear Power
Plants

• AC Signal Analysis
• 1965 1975 RD
• 1975 - 1985 Demonstrations
• 1985 Now Commercial Applications
• DC Signal Analysis
• 1980 1990 RD (Post TMI)
• 1990 2000 Demonstrations
• 2000 Now Commercial Applications

5
Developers and Users of On-Line Monitoring
Technologies
Europe
North America
International
USA
France
UK
IEC
IAEA
Canada
HRP/IFE
EPRI UT/ANL NRC/AMS
Chalk River (AECL)
EDF Plants
Sizewell B
TECDOCS
Standard 62385
PEANO TEMPO
6
and

• UT Research
• - DOE Project (Late 1980s)
• - Empirical modeling and Neural Networks
• - Redundant Sensor Estimation Techniques
• ANL Research
• - SSA
• - MSET/SPRT
• - MSET Uncertainty Analysis

7
and
NRC

• NUREG-0800/BTP-13
• - NUREG/CR-4928
• - NUREG/CR-5560
• SER July 2000
• - NUREG/CR-6343
• - NUREG/CR-5501

8
IEC and IAEA Activities

• IEC 62385 Nuclear Power Plant
  Instrumentation and Control Methods for
  Assessing the Performance of Safety System
  Instrument Channels Due for completion in 2006.
  Meetings already held on this standard Houston
  Helsinki Toulouse China Canada. Next
  meeting in Korea in April 2005.
• IAEA-TECDOC-Draft On-line Calibration
  Monitoring of Process Instruments in NPPs to be
  published in 2005. Meetings already held on this
  TECDOC Vienna Norway . Next meeting in
  Vienna in March 2005.

9
Top Ten Reasons Why U.S. Plants Are Not Using
On-Line Calibration Monitoring (Yet)

• We do not want to be the first plant
• We do not have enough transmitters to make it
  worthwhile
• We calibrate our transmitters on-line already
• It will take work away from our technicians
• We want to do this, but it is low in our priority

10
(Continued)

• EPRI is doing it for us
• You must convince our management
• Our engineers are working on it
• If we do this, we might be forced to begin doing
  response time measurements again
• We do not have any money now

11
Top Ten Reasons Why U.S. Plants May Begin to Use
On-Line Calibration Monitoring

• Technology is available and NRC approved
• Reduce outage time
• Relieve IC techs for other work
• Reduce risk of mis-calibrations
• Reduce risk of plant trips

12
(Continued)

• Reduce risk of damage to plant equipment
• Trend transmitter performance to help with
  replacement schedules and aging management
• Improve plant safety (some regulatory agencies
  would like for plants to continue the current
  manual calibration practice and also implement
  on-line calibration monitoring)
• Catch problems as they occur
• ALARA

13
END
History of On-Line Calibration Monitoring
Developments in Nuclear Power Plants