Stability monitor for Boiling Water Reactors based on the Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition

Abstract

In this work a stability monitor based on a novel technique is presented. This monitor permits to launch general alarms indicating incipient high decay ratios (DR) and out-of-phase oscillations, in a simultaneous way time along. The implemented methodology to determine the estimations of DR and out-of-phase oscillations is based on the Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition (MEMD) processing the information obtained from all LPRMs located across the core of Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). The extracted modes with the MEMD, called the Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs), permit to tracking the oscillation associated to the density wave. The Case 9 (presenting high DRs and apparently out-of-phase oscillations simultaneously) from the Ringhals stability benchmark was used to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.