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North American construction is back—smaller and faster—at OPG’s Darlington
“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”
Ronald L. Boring, Thomas A. Ulrich, Torrey J. Mortenson (INL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1210-1221
This paper provides a concise discussion of levels of automation that may be applied in the design of the control and information systems of control rooms at advanced reactors. The paper highlights that there are two types of automation?control automation for actions performed at the plant and information automation for synthesizing key plant parameters for use by reactor operators. This paper reviews current automation implementations at current nuclear power plants and considers opportunities for enhanced automation in newer plants. While automation may bring clear benefits such as reduced staffing levels, poorly introduced automation can actually have adverse effects on operator performance by relegating operators to tasks at which they perform poorly. This paper concludes with a discussion of considerations for automation relative to primary vs. secondary side control and monitoring.