EDF, the French electrical utility, has awarded Atos Origin (prime contractor) and Thales the contract for the Full Scope Simulator for the 1450 MW nuclear power plants. It is a “full replica” simulator reproducing the entire control room and most plant subsystems. In addition to operator training, its purpose is the functional validation of the control system software and data.
Business Challenge
In order to make the trainees feel as if they were operating a real plant, the Full Scope Simulator provides a full replica of the control room and the accurate representation of the realtime processes, as the operators in a real plant control room would experience them.
Solution
The scope of simulation covers most operating conditions, from cold shutdown to normal full power, normal transients, incidental and accidental situations. The extent of simulation is sizeable, to fit with the whole power plant systems equipped with physical and I&C modeling. Specific training functions include:
- repository of initial conditions,
- snapshot or periodic recording,
- recording and replay of continuous sequences,
- remote controls for the instructor,
- failures of plant and control, equipment, down to PLCs, CPUs or IO cards,
- loss of power supply,
- accelerate, slow speed, freeze,
- management of trainees and training program.
Benefits
It is a well-known fact in industry that main risks come from human errors. The main advantage of this real-time technical platform is to assist operators to take faster and proper actions and therefore to greatly reduce risks in case of cascade of alarms. Improved safety mainly comes from an intelligent highly efficient alarm processing based on plant conditions and from operating procedures in normal, incidental and accidental unit conditions. Operators are computer guided and stress relieved in a consistent environment to investigate problems and plan recovery actions.
ADACS™ (Advanced Data processing And Control System) is the solution to build a safe and reliable control system in continuous industries, with full hot redundancy, openness and high performances. ADACS™ is already running in different industry sectors, such as Nuclear Power Generation, Electrical Network and Water Treatment, in France and abroad.
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