The Emerson Exchange originally began more than two decades ago as a user conference, led by the user community, for the PROVOX system. It expanded to become the Fisher-Rosemount Systems User Group, and ultimately the Emerson Global Users Exchange—Emerson Exchange for short. Having expanded beyond control systems, the conference is a knowledge exchange for all the technologies and expertise across the Emerson Process Management business—including measurement & analytical devices, regulators & valves, and systems, software & lifecycle services.
I provide this as background because the Emerson Exchange expands to include the Rosemount Nuclear products for the first time. These pressure measurement technologies are used in nuclear power plants. Emerson’s Christopher Victor will be presenting 6B-5302 – Enhancing Nuclear Power Plant Safety: The Rosemount 3150 Series Transmitter. Here’s the presentation abstract [hyperlinks added]:
As the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan underscored, nuclear power plants must have accurate and reliable operation for all safety related systems, including the process instrumentation. Due to their critical nature, these safety systems are regulated and their components must be qualified to operate during abnormal events, such as an earthquake or a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). In such environments, the process instrumentation may be exposed to seismic level mechanical loadings, gamma radiation and high pressure/temperature steam. These conditions are significantly more severe than those seen in conventional process application.
With these industry realities in mind and in light of new cutting-edge reactor designs, the Rosemount 3150 Series nuclear qualified pressure transmitter delivers highly reliable and accurate measurement before, during and after exposure to the harshest conditions faced by nuclear customers.
This presentation will broadly highlight the unmatched performance of the Rosemount’s 3150 Series nuclear pressure transmitter offering. It will also detail the qualification process for the Rosemount Model 3154 Transmitter, which was designed for harsh environment installations inside the reactor containment building of a nuclear power plant.
In his presentation, Chris will provide an overview of the global nuclear power industry, background on Rosemount Nuclear, the challenge in providing pressure measurements in the demanding nuclear power application, and how technologies have been designed to meet these challenges. He’ll describe some of the applicable standards, testing, and performance around product aging, radiation, seismic, LOCA, and final inspection.
For the nuclear power industry, it’s critical that measurement devices will perform their intended safety function before, during and after being subjected to any potential accident condition in the plant. In order to provide the industry with a transmitter that will perform in the harsh environmental conditions of a nuclear power plant, the Rosemount Nuclear team incorporated fully analog electronics, a robust electronics housing and capacitance-sensing technology into the design of the Rosemount 3150 Series. These design elements play a large role in the transmitter’s ability to perform under extreme environmental stressors, such as vibration, radiation, high pressure/temperature steam or full submersion in boric acid at elevated temperatures.
Some examples of typical applications for these measurement devices include:
- Reactor pressure and level
- Reactor coolant pump DP
- Steam Generator pressure and level
- Main loop pressurizer pressure and level
- Containment pressure
For safety instrumented system applications, these devices must be subjected to a formal qualification test program. These programs are controlled by industry standards, such as IEEE, KTA and RCC-E, and vary by world area. This process, often carried out by an independent 3rd party, subjects the transmitter to a series of sequential environmental stressors that are designed to simulate potential accident conditions within a nuclear power plant. These devices successfully completed these qualification test programs and are certified for use in critical safety system applications per the standards bodies.
If you’ll be joining us in Dallas and in the nuclear power industry, or curious about the industry, schedule Chris’ session and bring your questions for him and catch up with him in the exhibits area.
