Towards fusion of soft computing and hard computing techniques for the operation of nuclear power plants - abs55

Modern approaches and advanced applications for the operation of nuclear power plants (NPPs) have been proved to be an extremely challenging problem. The well-developed field of conventional hard computing (HC) techniques offers efficient solutions to a wide variety of existing applications of the operation of NPPs. However, the HC techniques often rely upon strict mathematical modeling, analysis, and synthesis. It does not seem that they can easily cope very well with uncertain and unpredictable environments all the time. On the other hand, the advent of soft computing (SC) techniques does provide us a powerful tool to solve demanding real-world problems related to some relevant topics of the operation of NPPs. This paper briefly describes some of the technology in the soft computing areas that has been possibly developed for application to NPPs. The paper further discusses on the issue of SC techniques from the author's experience of an R and D fuzzy logic control project at SCK.CEN and concludes that the fusion of the SC and HC techniques has provided and will continue to provide innovative solutions for modern approaches and advanced applications of the operation of NPPs. (author)