Process Control Evolution and Challenges in Nuclear Power Plants

This tutorial paper is to present the evolution of the methodology that has guided performance optimization and the design techniques that ensure the robustness of control systems in the nuclear power plants at Ontario Power Generation Inc. The evolution is a true implementation of the design principles that have been pioneered by Canadian nuclear professionals over the past half century and reflects continuous learning, one of the core values in our safety culture, so that we can perform tasks with rigor and certainty. The paper will discuss failure mode and effects analysis by sharing some lessons we learned from our digitalization of some components and equipment. Human factors engineering is a design technique we use to reduce human errors when operators are part of process control loops. While this paper focuses on plant process control systems, our two sister papers are dedicated to turbine governor control [1](included in Appendix B in this paper) and the coordination between the energy generated from nuclear power plants and the demand from the electrical grid in the context of Small Modular Reactor [2].