Research on Hybrid Communication System for Nuclear Power Plants Safety-DCS

To guarantee the human and facilities safety during emergency states in Nuclear Power Plant(NPP), numerous detectors and sensors are used in the Safety Distributed Control System(Safety-DCS) to prevent the equipments and operators from the further damages that may happened in the unexpected situations. Together with the detectors and sensors, various cables and switches are involved in the entire system. Those security interfaces and cables increase the complexity and volume of the spatial arrangements of the system. Hundreds of Reactor Protection Cabinets (RPC) are used in the Safety-DCS, and the various of cables are even more in typical Safety-DCS of NPP. Currently most of the efforts on the system optimization are focus on the hardware upgrade, while the system framework stands still. This paper chooses to work on the direction of decreasing the complexity of the entire system by using wireless communication devices to replace part of the wired connection equipments, like the tons of electric cables and interfaces. Based on this guideline, a hybrid communication strategy is presented and discussed in both of the feasibility and benefits. In this structure, the general system can be simplified in the overall arrangement with some extra attached benefits.