Expert systems for analysis and management assistance of nuclear reactor electrical power supplies

Electrical power supplies of nuclear plants are very complex systems. They are studied in many ways: failure consequences, probabilistic risk assessement, failure diagnosis, corrective actions in case of incident ... Knowledge base technology (expert systems) is very suited to solve these problems. A common structural representation can generate specific functional representations; thus we get coherency and easy evolution. This paper shows a two facet methodology: the plant description (both static and dynamic) and reasoning about it. Current applications are developed for pressurized water reactors and gas cooled reactors, using the SPIRAL expert system shell buil at CEA