Rolls-Royce has designed and manufactured Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs) for over 50 years. This paper describes the design development of a nuclear standard bidirectional solenoid valve that can be used to simplify a valve actuating system for a PWR. In PWRs, hydraulic actuation systems to operate key plant valves can be complex, often comprising of a combination of electrical and pneumatically actuated valves. A typical arrangement uses solenoid-controlled pneumatic valves to operate hydraulically actuated valves.
A bidirectional solenoid valve was developed to eliminate the requirement for pneumatic control valves and their associated infrastructure, allowing direct solenoid valve control of the actuating water. The elimination of the pneumatic system affords benefits in terms of cost and maintenance. The solenoid valve design was developed from an existing design with proven history in the petrochemical industry. The concept design was chosen for its simplicity, but required significant development in order to meet the requirements for a PWR application.
This paper highlights some of the key developments and gives an overview of the verification and validation activities undertaken to demonstrate the functional viability of the concept design.
