Nuclear Power Plant Control and Instrumentation in Italy: Recent developments and future perspectives

The result of the ''referendum'' in Italy in November 1987 led to cut-back nuclear activities in Italy, as far as both construction and operation on nuclear plants are concerned. A new PEN (National Energy Plan), calls, however, for a programme of research and industrial development of reactors with inherent and passive safety features. ENEA is now engaged in a critical analysis and comparison of different concepts, particularly aimed on safety and environmental and social impact. A particular attention is devoted to relevant subsystems and components with high innovation degree. For the Control System and Instrumentation there is the aim to define rules and design criteria, by evaluating the impact of inherent safety goals on the C and I design. The effort on man-machine interface is considered essential to increase safety and efficiency of advanced reactors. In the frame of the new National Energy Plan, the ENEA effort in the CI area is part of a more general Industrial Promotion Program oriented to optimize the plant process, reducing the environmental impact of energy systems. In such an effort, some questions can be solved by knowledges originally developed in the nuclear and aero-spatial field. So, the national industrial promotion program, tends to transfer to industrial application the developed competencies on disciplines like: Software engineering and reliability; engineering of diffused systems and local networks; electromagnetical compatibility; industrial diagnostic; expert systems in industrial applications; modelling and simulators; ''intelligent'' detection systems and sensors; process optimization. (author). 3 tabs