Component Monitoring Strategies for iPWR Plant Systems during Operational Transients

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are currently at the forefront of the nuclear industry as potential next stage in nuclear energy production. Implementing a new reactor technology in a commercial setting contains many challenges in terms of maintaining safety and regulatory standards since all of the regulatory framework is based on the traditional PWR design. One benefit of the SMR design is the increased ability to load-follow to meet the constant changes in grid demand. This type of operational strategy introduces changes into the system that impacts the operational lifespan of system components due to increased degradation. Since there are no current SMR plants in operation along with minimal operational experience for load maneuvering in the current reactor fleet, any type of system health analysis will have to rely heavily on simulation data to characterize how the plant systems respond to operational transients. This work proposes utilizing simulated operational data to assess which condition monitoring strategies would be suitable for a SMR plant with load following capabilities by simulating a fault in the feedwater pump. In this work, two of the three anomaly detection strategies introduced proved capable for identifying the simulated fault in the load following data.