Health Monitoring of Digital I&C Systems Using Online Electromagnetic Measurements

Instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants are made of an assembly of analog and/or digital components which together emit a unique electromagnetic signature that relates to the condition of the whole assembly.This signature can therefore be recorded, analyzed, and tracked to determine the condition and health of instrumentation and control systems.This is very important to the nuclear industry because no non-intrusive condition monitoring technique is currently available for degradation monitoring of digital instrumentation and control systems.Existing condition monitoring features incorporated in digital instrumentation and control systems for nuclear power plants typically provide an alert after a failure has occurred.Under this project, new technology will be developed to passively monitor instrumentation and control systems and identify degradation before it can affect plant safety or efficiency.In Phase I, the feasibility of a passive condition and health monitoring technique for digital instrumentation and control assets in nuclear power plants was established.The technique is based on monitoring the emissions that are radiated through the air or conducted on cables from a system.These emissions were shown to correlate to the condition of components within the system under test, providing an early indication of degradations which may lead to failure of digital in instrumentation and control systems.Hardware and software will be developed to acquire and analyze electromagnetic emissions from instrumentation and control systems.A broad assortment of instrumentation and control systems and their components will be exposed to artificial degradation and monitored for changes in electromagnetic signatures.These results will then be used to develop an in-situ test method for automated emissions measurements in nuclear power plants for monitoring the health of digital instrumentation and control systems.By employing the proposed system, nuclear plant operators will be able to more proactively maintain their instrumentation and control systems, improve plant safety, increase plant availability and reliability, reduce risks to operation, and limit the number and duration of unplanned shutdowns.In addition, digital instrumentation and control components may gain wider adoption in the nuclear industry if measures are in place to help ensure their reliability.These benefits will help make the existing fleet of nuclear reactors more competitive and will add to the prosperity of next generation of nuclear reactors.