Design and operation experience with control and instrumentation systems: Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station Unit I

This paper describes five problems covering the design and operating experience with the control and instrumentation systems for the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station Unit 1. This unit is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor system developed by Gulf General Atomic in cooperation with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Philadelphia Electric Company, and the High-Temperature Reactor Development Associates, Inc., composed of 53 U.S. utility companies. It has been in commercial service on the system of Philadelphia Electric since June 1967. In general, the problems encountered during startup and operation do not reveal any new areas requiring special attention from a design standpoint. Rather, the experience to date reconfirms the known requirements for designing trouble-free instrumentation and control systems. Lest attention be focused only on the problems encountered, it would be well to remark on the successful operation of the instrumentation and control systems. Operations to date have shown relatively few instrumentation problems beyond those that fall under the category of normal maintenance. The control system response has closely matched the design predictions. The protection systems have responded, without failure, when required. False trips have not occurred except on a few occasions when problems occurred during routine testing.