Design and Development of HTR-PM Reactor Protection System

Author(s):  
Duo Li ◽  
Huasheng Xiong ◽  
Chao Guo

High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor-Pebble bed Module (HTR-PM) Reactor Protection System (RPS) is a dedicated system to be designed and developed according to HTR-PM Nuclear Power Plant reactor protection specifications. HTR-PM RPS has the framework of four redundant channels and has two independent and diverse subsystem x and subsystem y to perform different protection functions, which would decrease the potential common cause failure caused by software and increase the system reliability.

Author(s):  
Jia Qianqian ◽  
Guo Chao ◽  
Li Jianghai ◽  
Qu Ronghong

The nuclear power plant with two modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTR-PM) is under construction now. The control room of HTR-PM is designed. This paper introduces the alarm displays in the control room, and describes some verification and validation (V&V) activities of the alarm system, especially verification for some new human factor issues of the alarm system in the two modular design. In HTR-PM, besides the regular V&V similar to other NPPs, the interference effect of the alarm rings of the two reactor modules at the same time, and the potential discomfort of the two reactor operators after shift between them are focused. Verifications at early stage of the two issues are carried on the verification platform of the control room before the integrated system validation (ISV), and all the human machine interfaces (HMIs) in the control room, including the alarm system are validated in ISV. The test results on the verification platform show that the alarm displays and rings can support the operators understand the alarm information without confusion of the two reactors, and the shift between the two reactor operators have no adverse impact on operation. The results in ISV also show that the alarm system can support the operators well.


Author(s):  
Sun Na ◽  
Shi Gui-lian ◽  
Xie Yi-qin ◽  
Li Gang ◽  
Jiang Guo-jin

Communication independence is one of the key criteria of digital safety I&C system design. This paper mainly analyzes the requirements for communication independence in safety regulations and standards, and then introduces the architecture and design features, including communication failure processing measures, of communication networks of ACPR1000 nuclear power plant safety digital protection system based on FirmSys platform developed by CTEC. The communication design meets the regulations requirements and effectively improves the safety and reliability of the system, and it is successfully applied in reactor protection system (RPS) of Yang Jiang nuclear power plant unit 5&6. In addition this design can provide reference for communication designs of other NPPs and industries.


Author(s):  
Huasheng Xiong ◽  
Duo Li ◽  
Liangju Zhang

Reactor protection system is one of the most important safety systems in nuclear power plant and shall be designed with very high reliability. Digital computer-based Reactor Protection System (RPS) takes great advantages over its conventional counterpart based on analog technique and faces the issues how to effectively demonstrate and confirm the completeness and correctness of the software that performs reactor safety functions in the same time. It is commonly accepted that the essential way to solve safety software issues in a digital RPS is to pass a strict and independent Verification and Validation (V&V) process, in which integrated RPS testing play an important role to form a part of the overall system validation. Integrated RPS testing must be carried out rigorously before the system is delivered to nuclear power plant. The integrated testing are often combined with the factory acceptance test (FAT) to form a single testing activity, during which the RPS is excited by emulated static and dynamic input signals. The integration testing should simulate normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences and accident conditions, as well as anticipated faults on the inputs to the DRPS such as sensors out of range or ambiguous input readings. All safety function requirements of digital RPS should be confirmed by representative testing. The design and development of a test facility to carry out the integrated RPS testing are covered in this paper, which is merged in the research on a digital RPS engineering prototype for a nuclear power plant. The test facility is based on PXI platform and LabVIEW software development environment and its architecture design also takes into account the test functions future extensions such as hardware upgrades and software modules enhancement. The test facility provides the digital RPS with redundant, synchronized and multi-channel emulated signals that are produced to emulate all protection signals from 1E class sensors and transmitters with time varied value within their possible ranges, which would put integrated RPS testing into practice to confirm the digital RPS has fully met its predefined safety functionality requirements. The designed test facility can provide an independent verification and validation process for the research of digital RPS with scientific methods and authentic data to evaluate the RPS performance thoroughly and effectively, such as measuring threshold precision and trip response time, analyzing system statistical reliability and so on.


Author(s):  
Charles W. Morrow

The Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) chain of processes consumes the equivalent of 10% of initial natural gas flow for liquefaction, transportation and regasification of the natural gas. It is possible with the right process to recover some of this lost investment during the regasification process. The High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) nuclear power plant appears to possess the characteristics needed to accomplish this recovery. This synergy of processes and fluid properties between an LNG regasification plant and an HTGR provides an opportunity to enhance an already efficient nuclear power generation scheme. Boiling LNG (112 K) provides an ideal cold side heat sink for the helium based Brayton cycle of the HTGR. Helium remains in the gas phase at these low temperatures. The resulting large temperature difference (1000 K) between the high temperature and low temperature sides of a thermal cycle means Carnot efficiencies approach 90%. Achievable efficiencies approach 77%, an increase from 48% for current ambient temperature cooled HTGR designs. Thus a LNG/HTGR plant can deliver half again more power for similar capital investments and operating costs. In addition, boiling LNG with helium saves fuel gas costs for the regasification plant. This paper will show that this combination is feasible and economic. Since both processes are designed to run at maximum capacity, duty cycles and plant availability criteria match. For coastal locations, both processes possess similar site selection criteria. Finally, combining the processes will impose no unmanageable safety constraints on either system and in fact could make safe operation easier to attain. This paper will provide general overviews of an HTGR power plant and of the LNG-to-market sequence, concentrating on regasification plants. The paper will then describe a process that combines an HTGR power plant with an LNG regasification facility to the advantage of both. At full load, the economic benefit for a dual installation supporting what would be a 1.1 GWe power plant before improvement would be approximately $423 million per year.


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