A user-friendly, digital console for the control room parameters supervision in old-generation nuclear plants

Highlights: • We propose a user-friendly monitoring system for reactor supervision. • Statistics from data analysis can be used to optimize reactor management. • The tool has been designed in order to include a simulation tool for prediction. • The proposed system could help operators in training and continuous learning. - Abstract: In this work a user-friendly, digital monitoring system for supervision of process variables coming from a fission nuclear reactor of TRIGA type (1-MW TRIGA reactor RC-1) is presented. The system, developed on the basis of COTS tools, can easily interface the control room instrumentation and display the typical monitoring parameters (e.g. nuclear power, temperatures, flow rates, radiological variables) in an intuitive, user-adjustable way for plant operators. A front panel of a virtual instrument allows for a direct measure while the acquisition system, for signals coming from the reactor, can process the data and generate a detailed representation of the results, whose statistics can be interpreted to optimize the reactor management parameters. This system has been also designed so as to include a simulation tool able to predict specific performances and investigate critical phenomena, and to optimize overall plant performances. In particular, it allows to have a feedback control and to perform several predictive statistical surveys of all main process parameters. The proposed system could help operators in training and continuous learning activities, and serve as a basis for an advanced decision support system and for a remote training tool for students and trainees not authorized to work in a radiation environment.