Digital Systems for Reactor Control: Design, Experience of Operation

Conversion of traditional analog NPP I&C systems to digital systems is a common tendency for many countries. Digital systems for reactor control designed by «Radiy» Company (Kirovograd, Ukraine) are described below. FPGA (Field Programmable Gates Arrays) were used for implementation of control algorithms. An equivalence between FPGA-projects implementation and schemes of control technological algorithms permitted to simplify development and verification processes and decrease the number of development errors. The platform was used for implementation of different safety important systems: reactor protection systems, automatic reactor power control and limitation systems, rods control systems, control safety systems. The main peculiarity of the reactor protection system is different types of diversity (apparatus and program diversity due to different hardware and different languages in main and diverse divisions; functional diversity; difference of CASE-tools). These systems have been used at 10 units. Reliability measures of systems and their components were determined using operational statistical data. Possible uses for these systems: modernization of different types of existing reactors (not only WWER); as full system or as subsystems; not only for Ukraine, but for other countries; for reactors III+ and IV generations.