A Monitoring Method of Movements in Control Rod Drive Mechanism using Wavelet Transform

웨이블릿 변환을 이용한 원자로 제어봉구동장치 동작 감시 방법

In this paper, we proposed a new method detecting actions of some components driven by the coil excitation. Nuclear power reactors are typically controlled by the movement of several neutron-absorbing control rods into or out of the reactor core. For moving control rods, we use an electromagnetic-jack-typed mechanism, which is called Control Rod Drive Mechanism. This mechanism moves control rods by the step composed of sequential actions of components. In case any mechanical problems happen in the mechanism, the orders for the control rod movement from the higher system cannot be performed properly. This abnormal state must be monitored and the sequential actions of the components can be the monitoring target. The actions of components generate some deviations in the profiles of the currents flowing into the coils in the mechanism. We focused on this phenomena and devised a new method of detecting the actions of the components in Control Rod Drive Mechanism by using the wavelet transform for observing the current profile.