The plant condition monitoring system for a boiling water reactor

A computerized operational condition monitoring system for a BWR plant, called a plant condition monitoring system, has been developed. The system monitors plant component performance and detects symptoms of small incidents. When an anomaly symptom is detected, the system supports investigation of the anomaly cause in troubleshooting. The monitoring functions are based on three key technologies: Management of a large amount of operational database, utilization of anomaly diagnosis experience, and various kinds of signal processing. Plant condition monitoring by investigating process data behavior is one of the most important categories of preventive maintenance activity. The authors have been studying BWR plant diagnosis techniques and have developed the monitoring system in order to apply it to this category. This paper describes the primary functions of the system and the application experience. (orig.)