Computer-based Alarm Processing and Presentation Methods in Nuclear Power Plants

Computerized alarm systems have been applied increasingly to nuclear power plants. For existing plants, an add-on computer alarm system is often installed to the control rooms. Alarm avalanches during the plant transients are major problems with the alarm systems in nuclear power plants. Computerized alarm systems can process alarms to reduce the number of alarms during the plant transients. This paper describes various alarm processing methods, an alarm cause tracking function, and various alarm presentation schemes to show alarm information to the operators effectively which are considered during the development of several computerized alarm systems for Korean nuclear power plants and are found to be helpful to the operators.

Authors:

• Jung-Woon Lee
• Jung-Taek Kim
• Jae-Chang Park
• In-Koo Hwang
• Sung-Pil Lyu

Keywords:

• Alarm processing
• Alarm presentation
• Alarm causetracking
• Alarm logic diagram computerization
• Alarm patternrecognition.

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