Evaluation of a Distributed Control System for Potential Applications in Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

There are a wide variety of requirements for control systems to be used in a nuclear power plant (NPP). Distributed Control Systems (DCSs) have become an obvious choice. Even though they have many attractive features over their analog counterparts, however, to meet the reliability and safety requirements, it is important that the functionalities of commercial DCSs be evaluated. In this paper, a novel framework for evaluating DCSs for use in a nuclear power plant is presented. The evaluation can be divided into (a) static evaluations and (b) dynamic evaluations. Further, the dynamic evaluations will include generic and application-specific tests. For dynamic evaluation, a flexible test-bench has been constructed. Evaluations are carried out against the requirements of a typical NPP. The communication diversity, controller throughput, latency, and jitter of hard-wired digital, hard-wired analog, Modbus, and Ethernet connectivity are investigated. The generic tests are performed on an Emerson Process DeltaV DCS. Steam Generator Level Control (SGLC) is used in the application-specific tests.