Nuclear power plant monitoring and fault diagnosis methods based on the artificial intelligence technique

The main objective of this paper is to develop an advanced diagnosis system based on the artificial intelligence technique to monitor the operation and to improve the operational safety of nuclear power plants. Three different methods have been elaborated in this study: an artificial neural network local diagnosis (NNds) scheme that acting at the component level discriminates between normal and abnormal transients, a model-based diagnostic reasoning mechanism that combines a physical causal network model-based knowledge compiler (KC) that generates applicable diagnostic rules from widely accepted physical knowledge compiler (KC) that generates applicable diagnostic rules from widely accepted physical knowledge. Although the three methods have been developed and verified independently, they are highly correlated and, when connected together, form a effective and robust diagnosis and monitoring tool. (authors)