Nuclear power plant on-line sensor calibration monitoring implementation issues

The use of empirical models for on-line monitoring (OLM) of safety-critical instrumentation for calibration reduction has been investigated for over a decade. To help support the regulatory review of possible licence amendments for US nuclear power plants, a series of three NUREG/CRs is being developed for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The third of these volumes, entitled 'Limiting Case Studies', presents the results of applying OLM models to a wide variety of plant data. Specifically, Volume III summarises seven case studies investigating the effects of model development and data assumptions on model performance, and offers recommendations for identifying and handling these limiting cases. This paper discusses the seven case studies. Although this study is not an exhaustive review of the many issues in OLM system development, it provides a base set of considerations that must be accounted for and a method for testing these considerations with other model architectures.

Keywords: diagnostics, empirical modelling, online monitoring, sensor calibration, surveillance, nuclear power plants, safety-critical instrumentation, case studies, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, USA, United States, nuclear energy, nuclear power