ON-LINE SIGNAL VALIDATION AND FEEDBACK CONTROL IN A NUCLEAR REACTOR.

A signal validation technique has been developed for real-time fault diagnosis, information display, and sensor calibration in nuclear and fossil power plants. The technique has been simultaneously applied to the on-line fault detection and isolation of power-related instrumentation, and to the computer control of power in an operating nuclear reactor. A CRT display presents the validated data and sensor diagnostics. The feedback signal to the controller is a digitally processed, weighted average of several valid power sensor signals where the weights are not a priori fixed but depend on the a posteriori probabilities of failure of individual sensors computed on the basis of past and current observations.