(Press-News.org) IDAHO FALLS — Modernizing nuclear power plants to help extend their operating lifetimes is no small task. But the endeavor offers an opportunity to improve control-room design and layout.
The Department of Energy's new Human System Simulation Laboratory (HSSL) at Idaho National Laboratory is a full-scale virtual nuclear control room that can test the safety and reliability of proposed technology replacements before they are implemented in commercial nuclear control rooms. The facility is now helping Duke Energy embark on an upgrade project for several of its nuclear plant control rooms.
This one-of-a-kind control room simulator is specifically designed to facilitate digital renovation of existing plants, which predominantly use analog systems. The INL lab also enables scientists to improve control-room designs by studying human interactions with the instruments and responses to alarms.
"The goal is to provide industry with a capability to understand and test how proposed changes to existing instrumentation and control systems will affect their plants," said Richard Reister, manager of the Department of Energy's Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program in the Office of Nuclear Energy. "This will allow better design and digital upgrades with less risk of potential unforeseen problems."
The virtual control room was funded as part of the overarching DOE LWRS Program, and INL contributed Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding toward the new capability.
The project began in 2010 to support updating of control-room alarm systems. However, researchers quickly realized that full control-room modernization was necessary to achieve the highest safety goals. The HSSL lab can now extensively evaluate operator performance and safety risks of a new control-room interface before it is installed in an active plant.
INL's control-room simulator is a hybrid facility that mimics both digital and analog systems, which typically support physical controls such as valves, gauges, keyboards and touch screens.
The HSSL includes state-of-the-art glass-top touch-sensitive panels. These virtual controls are fully reconfigurable to duplicate control rooms of any operating nuclear reactor. The displays can reproduce hundreds of analog control boards, which real nuclear operator crews can interact with.
Design engineers observe these interactions and study human responses to normal and emergency situations in newly formatted control rooms. Such information can help enhance operator control and situational awareness.
The full-scale, 15-panel simulator was fully completed in March, though operator crews from HSSL's industry partners had begun running initial simulations with the technology in November.
"There is no other research facility in the world like this focused on control-room modernization," said Ron Boring, principal investigator for the Pilot Project on Control Room Modernization. "We're already developing prototypes that are demonstrating the benefits of new technologies at nuclear power plants. Modernizing these control rooms is hugely exciting research that also fills an important need in industry."
The HSSL is currently running three plant control models, with most development efforts focused on Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant in North Carolina, the first of many simulations for industry partner Duke Energy as the company begins a fleetwide digitizing of its nuclear plants. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) — which conducts research and development for the electric industry— is collaborating in HSSL's research.
"The HSSL provides the ability to rapidly develop prototype control-room modifications, get early feedback from control-room operators, and test new designs with realistic plant scenarios before the designs are built," said Joseph Naser, EPRI project manager and technical executive. "This will allow the designs to effectively and reliably meet the goals of the plant owner and will reduce the cost and time to implementation."
As the HSSL is used to gather data, the simulation results will be available for any company in the nuclear industry to use in control-room modernization, said Bruce Hallbert, an LWRS program manager.
The simulation lab team is currently working on prototype digital displays that would convey chemical balance, turbine control and other important plant information not captured on the current panels. The objective is to introduce information that can help human controllers maintain their situational awareness, particularly during emergencies.
"The goal of control room modernization is to replace aging analog technology," said Hallbert. "We want to enhance the functionality and safety of operating nuclear power plants by leveraging the capabilities of new digital technologies."
INFORMATION:
INL is one of the DOE's 10 multiprogram national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of DOE's strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and environment. INL is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Day-to-day management and operation of the laboratory is the responsibility of Battelle Energy Alliance.
See more INL news at http://www.inl.gov. Follow @INL on Twitter or visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/IdahoNationalLaboratory.
NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Teri Ehresman, 208-526-7785, teri.ehresman@inl.gov
Misty Benjamin, 208-526-5940, misty.benjamin@inl.gov
Virtual control room helps nuclear operators, industry
2013-08-08
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Genetic evidence shows recent population mixture in India
2013-08-08
Scientists from Harvard Medical School and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, provide evidence that modern-day India is the result of recent population mixture among divergent demographic groups.
The findings, published August 8 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, describe how India transformed from a country where mixture between different populations was rampant to one where endogamy—that is, marrying within the local community and a key attribute of the caste system—became the norm.
"Only a few thousand years ago, the ...
LEC: A multi-purpose tool
2013-08-08
KANSAS CITY, MO—A little-studied factor known as the Little Elongation Complex (LEC) plays a critical and previously unknown role in the transcription of small nuclear RNAs (snRNA), according to a new study led by scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and published in the Aug. 22, 2013, issue of the journal Molecular Cell.
"We have found that LEC not only has a role in this process—it is like the "Swiss Army knife" of snRNA transcription," says Stowers Investigator Ali Shilatifard, senior author of the study. "LEC does it all." The findings shed new ...
Sanford-Burnham scientists identify key protein that modulates organismal aging
2013-08-08
LA JOLLA, Calif., August 8, 2013 — Scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris is gobbled up to protect cells from damage, and in turn, modulates aging. The findings, published in Nature Communications today, could lead to the development of new therapies for age-related disorders that are characterized by a breakdown in this process.
Malene Hansen, Ph.D., associate professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb ...
Latino genomes point way to hidden DNA
2013-08-08
Hidden in the tangled, repetitious folds of DNA structures called centromeres, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute have discovered the hiding place of 20 million base pairs of genetic sequence, finding a home for 10 percent of the DNA that is thought to be missing from the standard reference map of the human genome.
Mathematician Giulio Genovese, a computational biologist in genetics at HMS and at the Broad Institute, working in the lab of geneticist Steven McCarroll, HMS assistant professor of genetics and director of genetics for the Stanley ...
Scientists watch live brain cell circuits spark and fire
2013-08-08
Scientists used fruit flies to show for the first time that a new class of genetically engineered proteins can be used to watch nerve cell electrical activity in live brains. The results, published in Cell, suggest these proteins may be a promising new tool for mapping brain cell activity in multiple animals and for studying how neurological disorders disrupt normal nerve cell signaling. Understanding brain cell activity is a high priority of the President's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.
Brain cells use electricity ...
A powerful strategy for developing microbial cell factories by employing synthetic small RNAs
2013-08-08
The current systems for the production of chemicals, fuels and materials heavily rely on the use of fossil resources. Due to the increasing concerns on climate change and other environmental problems, however, there has been much interest in developing biorefineries for the production of such chemicals, fuels and materials from renewable resources. For the biorefineries to be competitive with the traditional fossil resource-based refineries, development of high performance microorganisms is the most important as it will affect the overall economics of the process most significantly. ...
Scientists devise innovative method to profile and predict the behavior of proteins
2013-08-08
SAN FRANCISCO, CA and COLLEGE STATION, TX—August 8, 2013—An enzyme is a tiny, well-oiled machine. A class of proteins that are made up of multiple, interlocking molecular components, enzymes perform a variety of tasks inside each cell. However, precisely how these components work together to complete these tasks has long eluded scientists. But now, a team of researchers has found a way to map an enzyme's underlying molecular machinery, revealing patterns that could allow them to predict how an enzyme behaves—and what happens when this process disrupted.
In the latest ...
Kids born small should get moving
2013-08-08
HOUSTON – (Aug. 8, 2013) – Female mice who were growth restricted in the womb were born at a lower birth weight, but were less active and prone to obesity as adults, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) at BCM and Texas Children's Hospital in a report that appears online in the International Journal of Obesity.
"Given that human studies also show female-specific obesity following early growth restriction," said Dr. Robert Waterland, associate professor of pediatrics – nutrition at BCM, and a member ...
Scientific breakthrough reveals how vitamin B12 is made
2013-08-08
Vitamin B12 is pieced together as an elaborate molecular jigsaw involving around 30 individual components. It is unique amongst the vitamins in that it is only made by certain bacteria. In the early 1990's it was realised that there were two pathways to allow its construction – one that requires oxygen and one that occurs in the absence of oxygen. It is this so-called anaerobic pathway, which is the more common pathway, that proved so elusive as the components of the pathway are very unstable and rapidly degrade.
However, as explained in a paper published by PNAS (Proceedings ...
New forensic technique for analyzing lipstick traces
2013-08-08
Using a technique called Raman spectroscopy, which detects laser light, forensic investigators will be able to analyse lipstick marks left at a crime scene, such as on glasses, a tissue, or cigarette butts, without compromising the continuity of evidence as the sample will remain isolated.
Analysis of lipstick traces from crime scenes can be used to establish physical contact between two individuals, such as a victim and a suspect, or to place an individual at a crime scene.
The new technique is particularly significant for forensic science as current analysis of lipstick ...