The development of a remote monitoring system for the Nuclear Science Center reactor

Abstract

With funding provided by Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI), design of Secure, Transportable, Autonomous Reactors (STAR) to aid countries with insufficient energy supplies is underway. The development of a new monitoring system that allows remote access to data from the reactor site is an important part of this project. The two goals of this monitoring system are to control the use of nuclear materials and to monitor the performance of the facility from a remote location. I have designed a prototype system for this NERI project that utilizes LabVIEW software and global network technologies to monitor the Nuclear Science Center (NSC) reactor at Texas A&M University. LabVIEW and its applications have all the needed features to build a monitoring system for many types of facilities, including STAR reactors. This system takes data from reactor cooling systems, power monitoring channels, fuel temperature indicators, control rod drives, security alarm sensors and stores it on local and remote hard drives, sends it through an output port to remote clients, and graphically displays these data in the reactor control room. Data from NSC TRIGA reactor is fed to a computer program that analyzes and predicts reactor performance in real time. To provide a remote observation of the working area and fissile material, this system uses cameras, triggered by alarm sensors and LabVIEW vision applications. Operators at the local and remote control stations may view and store all the images from these cameras. The system has been in operation for many months at the NSC with outstanding results and further development is continuing.