Distributed radiation protection console system

Radiation exposure control is one of the most important aspects in any nuclear facility . It encompasses continuous monitoring of the various areas of the facility to detect any increase in the radiation level and/or the air activity level beyond preset limits and alarm the O and M personnel working in these areas. Detection and measurement of radiation level and the air activity level is carried out by a number of monitors installed in the areas. These monitors include Area Gamma Monitors, Continuous Air Monitors, Pu-In-Air Monitors, Criticality Monitors etc. Traditionally, these measurements are displayed and recorded on a Central Radiation Protection Console(CRPC), which is located in the central control room of the facility. This methodology suffers from the shortcoming that any worker required to enter a work area will have to inquire about the radiation status of the area either from the CRPC or will get to know the same directly from the installed only after entering the area. This shortcoming can lead to avoidable delays in attending to the work or to unwanted exposure. The authors have designed and developed a system called Distributed Radiation Protection Console (DRPC) to overcome this shortcoming. A DRPC is a console which is located outside the entrance of a given area and displays the radiation status of the area. It presents to health physicist and the plant operators a graphic over-view of the radiation and air activity levels in the particular area of the plant. It also provides audio visual annunciation of the alarm status. Each radioactive area in a nuclear facility will have its own DRPC, which will receive as its inputs the analog and digital signals from radiation monitoring instruments installed in the area and would not only show those readings on its video graphic screen but will also provide warning messages and instructions to the personnel entering the active areas. The various DRPCs can be integrated into a Local Area Network, where the host computer can receive and process the data from all the DRPCs to form an alternative or additional Central Radiation Protection Console. The DRPC is essentially a small Computerized Data Acquisition System(CDAS) built around a panel PC. The panel PC serves as the host while an I/O system comprising a processor and I/O modules serves as the slave data acquisition system. The panel is a LCD Video monitor, which serves as the Graphical User Interface. The application software is developed on a Visual Basic 6.0 and MS Windows platform. The DRPC also includes a relay based alarm annunciation system, which provides redundancy to ensure availability of alarm status in the event of non-availability of the CDAS. (author)