Operational Availability Improvement through Online Monitoring and Advice For Emergency Diesel Generator

This research broadens the prime concern of nuclear power plant operations from safe performance to both economic and safe performance. First emergency diesel generator is identified as one of main contributors for the lost plant availability through the review of plants forced outage records. The framework of an integrated architecture for performing modern on-line condition for operational availability improvement is configured in this work. For the development of the comprehensive sensor networks for complex target systems, an integrated methodology incorporating a structural hierarchy, a functional hierarchy, and a fault-system matrix is formulated. The second part of our research is development of intelligent diagnosis and maintenance advisory system, which employs Bayesian Belief networks (BBNs) as a high level reasoning tool incorporating inherent uncertainty use in probabilistic inference. Our prototype diagnosis algorithms are represented explicitly through topological symbols and links between them in a causal direction. As new evidence from sensor network development is entered into the model especially, our advisory of system provides operational advice concerning both availability and safety, so that the operator is able to determine the likely modes, diagnose the system state, locate root causes, and take the most advantageous action. Thereby, this advice improves operational availability