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NN Asks: What have recent projects taught us about the move from analog to digital plant controls?
Thomas Burnelis
Transitioning in nuclear from the U.S. Navy to the commercial industry was always a goal for me, but stepping directly into a fully digital control room was a paradigm shift. Moving from the tactile, analog world of my military background to the data-rich environment of modern advanced reactors was jarring. Digital systems offer an unprecedented wealth of information, but unlocking that potential requires a fundamental shift in how we approach testing, commissioning, and startup.
Commissioning analog plants meant physical verification, such as lifting leads, injecting signals, and manually tweaking potentiometers to calibrate gains and offsets. Digital instrumentation and control (I&C) completely redefines this landscape. Today, nearly all plant data are available at our fingertips, but this brings the challenge of filtering an immense amount of data and system alarms. Troubleshooting has largely migrated from the field and into software, following digital signals from operator inputs to field devices.
Michael Corradini has been a member of the American Nuclear Society for over 35 years. He is a member of the Thermal Hydraulics Division and the Nuclear Installations Safety Division. He is also an ANS Fellow.
He is currently a distinguished professor of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI). He served from 1995 to 2001 as Associate Dean for the College of Engineering and as Chair of Engineering Physics from 2001-2011.
Corradini is widely published in areas related to vapor explosion phenomena, jet spray dynamics, and transport phenomena in multiphase systems.
In 1998, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He was also served as a presidential appointee as the Chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in 2002 and 2003. From 2004-2008, he served as a board member of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) National Accreditation Board for Nuclear Training. In 2006, he was appointed to the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and was elected to the National Council on Radiation Protection. Most recently, he was appointed Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the French Atomic Energy Agency.
He received a BS Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University, Milwaukee WI, a MS Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978-81 he served as a member of technical staff of Sandia National Laboratories.
Read Nuclear News from July 2012 for more on Michael.
