On Design of Fault-Tolerant Sensor Data Communication Systems under Severe Accident Conditions

Abstract

Severe accidents in nuclear facilities demonstrated the critical importance of accurate, relevant, and timely information about the reactor and containment statuses in managing the accident. Some nuclear regulatory bodies also require nuclear power plants (NPPs) to have some form of on-line monitoring systems on site as an integral part of a severe accident management program. In this regard, wireless sensor technologies have been investigated recently for post-accident monitoring systems (PAMSs) to gather critical information about the plant, reactor, and the surrounding environment, when other conventional systems are compromised due to harsh environment conditions such as high temperature and humidity under a severe accident. Furthermore, electronic components in a monitoring system may get damaged by the high levels of radiation potentially released during a severe accident. To improve the reliability and performance of such data communication systems under harsh environment, fault tolerant design must be employed. Redundant architectures with a redundancy management strategy is commonly used to achieve a desired level of fault-tolerance. This paper has reviewed some of the design considerations in a fault-tolerant data communication system linking sensors to an emergency response centre under severe accident conditions.