The real-time functional test facility for advanced instrumentation and control in nuclear power plants

Testing and validation of the functions and performance of the digital inst rumentation and control (I&C) system should be done prior to installation i n nuclear power plant. The objective of the I&C Functional Test Facility (F TF) is to test and validate the functions of developed digital control and various monitoring systems. The FTF provides the simulated testing environm ent as an experimental test bed, The FTF software consists of a mathematica l modeling program which simulates a three-loop 993 MWe pressurizer water r eactor and a supervisory program that comprises all the instructions necess ary to run the FTF, The hardware equipment pro, ides an interface between a host computer and a simple test panel or the developed target systems to b e tested. The graphical user interface supports an easy and friendly interf ace between the FTF and users. It is implemented through a Picasso-3 graphi c tool developed by the Halden Reactor Project. The FTF is applied to an ad vanced I&C system prototype, such as an automatic start-up intelligent cont rol system, dynamic alarm system. accident identification system, and intel ligent logic tracking system, to test its algorithm or performance, The res ults of the test show good operational performance of the FTF in normal and transient conditions.