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U.S. Department of Energy
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A proof-of-concept transient diagnostic expert system for BWRs (Boiling Water Reactors)

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5154896
A proof-of-concept transient diagnostic expert system has been developed to identify the cause and the type of an abnormal transient in a boiling water nuclear power plant. For this expert system development, the calculational results of the simulation code RETRAN were used as the knowledge source. The knowledge extracted from the RETRAN analyses was transformed into IF-THEN rules in the knowledge base for the expert system. An important feature of this expert system is the introduction of certainty factors to allow diagnosis even in the cases where data may be either missing or marked as invalid. To increase the capability of this diagnostic system to distinguish between similiar transients, backward chaining reasoning is used to support the forward chaining reasoning with certainty factors. Through this effort, it has been demonstrated that an expert system can be successfully used to create a transient diagnostic system. It has also successfully demonstrated that RETRAN can be used as the knowledge source for developing the knowledge base of the diagnostic system.
Research Organization:
Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (USA)
OSTI ID:
5154896
Report Number(s):
EPRI-NP-5827-SR; ON: TI88010463
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English