Applications of artificial intelligence to reactor and plant control

Potential improvements in plant efficiency and reliability are often cited as reasons for developing and applying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, principally expert systems, to the control and operation of nuclear reactors. Nevertheless, there have been few such applications and then mostly at the prototype level. Therefore, if AI techniques are to contribute to process control, methods must be identified by which rule-based and analytic approaches can be merged. This hypothesis is the basic premise of this article. Presented below are 1. a brief review of the human approach towards process control, 2. a discussion of the suitability of AI methodologies for the performance of control tasks, 3. examples of AI applications to both open- and closed-loop control, 4. an enumeration of unresolved issues associated with the use of AI for control, and 5. a discussion of the possible role of expert system techniques in process control. (orig./GL)