Conceptual design of emergency communication system to cope with severe accidents in NPPs and its performance evaluation

Abstract

The Fukushima accident induced by the great earthquake and tsunami reveals the vulnerability of I&C System. In the severe environment, the normal I&C system did not work properly and results in false information about the internal situation in NPP. Eventually the accident was not properly handled at the early stage. Therefore advanced emergency response system using a wireless channel is necessary to cope with the severe accident. In this paper, we introduce the ERS consisting of the HMS and MCS the ECS linking the HMS with MCS and the performance requirement of the ECS is analyzed. The ECS satisfying the requirement is designed conceptually and the performance of the ECS is evaluated through analysis and simulator. To secure a reliable and diverse configuration, the ECS is configured as the dual system which consists of the terrestrial communication and satellite communication. The terrestrial communication system is designed based on the IEEE 802.11. Analyzed performance results prove that the performance requirement can be sufficiently achieved. But if the scalability of data capacity is considered later, use of the advanced 802.11 standard such as 802.11n and multiple signal paths between the HMS and MCS are necessary. In the satellite communication system, the FDMA is used in the status link and the DSSS is used in the control link. The network supporting various data rates is designed and the communication link budget is analyzed considering the link availability of 99%. The designed satellite communication system can secure the link margin of 1.3–15.7dB.