POWER May 2022 Intl - 17

CONNECTED PLANT
testing NuScale has performed when
developing the company's power plant
control room simulator.
1. NuScale's control room simulator consists
of 12 reactor control terminals and operator
workstations. The simulator was used in the
design certification process to analyze the
human-machine interface design and controls
system strategy, and to develop operating
procedures. Courtesy: NuScale Power
and other modules to be manufactured
in the factory and then shipped to site
for final assembly, the question arises
whether this also means that much of
the instrumentation and associated cabling
would also be installed and verified
at the factory.
According to Hughes, the instrumentation
for the NuScale Power Module associated
with protection and control processes
will be embedded as much as practicable
during fabrication and assembly at the factory.
However, the I&C components for
the balance of the plant will be installed
during plant construction activities.
According to Holtec's Essner, " The goal
of modularity is to simplify plant construction.
This includes taking advantage of
factory-installed instrumentation where it
makes sense to do so. "
GE Hitachi and Moltex also plan to install
at least some instrumentation at the
factory.
Commercially Available Safety and
Non-Safety Systems
As required by the nuclear regulatory
agencies, SMR facilities will continue
to utilize separate, disparate, and largely
independent systems as appropriate for
safety and non-safety plant applications.
While many of these systems will be
based on well-established commercially
available platforms, others will utilize
custom-developed solutions.
NuScale's safety-related protection
system platform is based on Field Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) technology.
The system utilizes a patented
remove-power-to-actuate design. The
non-safety control systems, in contrast,
will be supplied by a vendor that NuScale
will reveal in the coming months. This
will leverage the extensive design and
May 2022 | POWER
Holtec has partnered with Mitsubishi
Electric in Japan to use that company's
MELTAC Nplus S digital safety controller
for safety-related controls and MELTACRX
system for non-safety controls. These
systems have been qualified in Japan
and accepted by the U.S. NRC for digital
safety systems.
GE Hitachi is taking an International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)- and International
Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC)-centric approach that provides " a
clear, explicit, and justifiable safety strategy
approach with deterministic and riskinformed
lines of defense. " The company
believes this framework supports implementation
of modern digital I&C solutions
because both the architecture and risks
are more understandable to the nuclear
regulators and other stakeholders. The
controls in the Safety Class 2 and 3 and
non-safety I&C systems will be commercially
available hardware and software.
Safety Class 1 will be a mix of commercially
available and proprietary systems.
Moltex is designing on the basis that
standard digital industrial process control
technology will be used for control and
monitoring systems. However, it is likely
that any protection equipment will be
hard wired. Moltex is in discussions with
several companies to determine their
suitability as preferred instrumentation
and component suppliers.
Framatome's modular, commercially
available digital safety platform, Teleperm
XS Compact, was designed for small and
decentralized Class 1 systems, making
it appropriate for SMR applications. According
to the company, the simplicity
of its design simplifies qualification. The
company also offers its Hardline non-programmed
safety platform plus a neutron
instrumentation system.
Simulators Gaining Traction
While simulation technology has been
utilized with the nuclear power industry
in some manner for decades now, the
technology really appears to be coming
into its own for SMRs. This includes the
use of high-fidelity simulators to support
regulatory agency acceptance as well as
for upfront engineering and design, optimization,
and ongoing O&M.
NuScale, for example, has built a control
room simulator that the company
used to test and demonstrate that the
new digital interface is safe and effective
for plant operations. Holtec will use
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simulators to pre-validate its systems
at the factory. Framatome's subsidiary,
CORYS, has been supplying training and
engineering simulators to the power and
other industries for more than 30 years.
Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics
Since many SMR facilities are likely to
be built in remote locations and have
limited on-site resources, remote monitoring
and diagnostics capabilities would
appear to be an excellent fit once the
associated cybersecurity and regulatory
hurdles are overcome.
According to Hughes at NuScale, " Analytics,
machine learning, and artificial
intelligence can all be leveraged to optimize
the predictive maintenance models
to maximize reliability and minimize cost
and downtime. " NuScale's service delivery
program will also be able to provide
a central repository for all customer operating
and maintenance data, enabling
the company to fine-tune the predictive
maintenance program across its future
fleet of plants.
" Advanced condition monitoring systems
to acquire, organize, and archive
plant process data with their downstream
analytics applications are essential
to enable condition and predictive
maintenance solutions, " said GE Hitachi's
Allen. GE Hitachi is also working to
incorporate the needed instrumentation
into its design and address cybersecurity
concerns to be able to take advantage
of GE's established strengths in remote
monitoring and predictive maintenance
across a variety of industries.
More Innovations on the Horizon?
SMRs can play an important role in the
transition to renewable, carbon-free power
generation. They represent a new and
potentially more sustainable paradigm for
the nuclear generation industry. However,
it appears that there's still plenty of room
for technology innovation at multiple levels,
from basic I&C through HMI, supervisory
control, and plant optimization.
Assuming that the relevant regulatory
agencies succeed in their current efforts
to simplify and streamline the technology
review and approval processes, it's likely
that we'll soon see additional innovations
emerge in the I&C/automation space. ■
-Paul Miller has been following technology
and industry trends in the power, oil
and gas, chemical, and other process
industries for more than 35 years, most
recently as content director at ARC
Advisory Group, a leading global market
research and technology consulting firm.
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