A Utility Model of Environmental Radiation Online Monitoring System of Nuclear Power Plants

Most of the existing nuclear power plants locate in coastal mountainous region. In the traditional way, radio communication is used between the environmental radiation monitoring stations and monitoring center. As the terrain and thunderstorms have great impact on radio, the signal is easily disturbed or intercepted. At the same time, the technologies and functions of the conventional system is no able to fully meet the requirements of the environmental monitoring of nuclear power plant in new situation.A utility model of environmental radiation online monitoring system of nuclear power plants is put forward to solve the former problems. The system includes a monitoring center with capability of data processing and multiple monitoring stations with capability of environmental radiation online monitoring. Each of stations has radiation detectors as the monitoring center consists of a main server and a backup server.The communications between the monitoring center and Stations include wire communication and wireless communication. Wire communication mentioned above consists of public telephone network and telephone lines between the network and monitoring stations. The wireless communication mentioned above consists of public telecommunication service network and virtual private network (VPN) which is able to transfer data confidentially.Through the network, monitoring center uses two servers to provide wire and wireless data reception service. Monitoring stations choose one of the normal channels to transfer environmental radiation monitoring data. Based on the status of communication, data will be shared and synchronized automatically between the main server and backup server.On the basic of the architecture of equipment and network, some software systems are designed and developed. The main subsystems of the software systems are the data acquisition workstation software systems and the central station software system. These two kinds of subsystems play different role in system. Some new computer technology (such as Microsoft .Net, Geographic Information System) is used in these software systems to provide better functions which include data storage, data management, data show, statistics and analysis to enhance efficiency and reliability.In the practical application of some NPPs in China, the utility model solves the former problems of environmental radiation online monitoring effectively and makes the system more dependable. It can be transplanted and popularized in other coastal nuclear power plants.Copyright © 2013 by ASME