Leveraging on line control valve diagnostics at Ringhals nuclear power station

摘要

The adoption of digital field instrumentation in the nuclear industry has, in general, been much slower than what has been seen in other industries. Current process control estimates would indicate that over 2 million digital valve controllers are installed on control valves around the world, but less than 10,000 of those can be found in nuclear power plants. The Ringhals nuclear site has taken a much more aggressive approach to adopting this key technology at their plant. The Ringhals site consists of 4 separate reactors located on the West coast of Sweden. Unit one is an ABB designed boiling water reactor (BWR). Units 2-4 are all Westinghouse pressurized water reactors (PWR). All of the reactors have undergone extensive redesign work in the last few years to extend their useful life to 60 years. In total, the site generates more than 3500 megawatts (MW), which is a huge amount of power. This is over 20% of the total electrical needs for the whole country. This article will focus on the adoption of valve mounted digital instrumentation at units 1 & 2, starting with unit 1.