SUPPORTING THE SAFE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS BY THE APPLICATION OF ON-LINE PROCESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Development of operator support and process information systems for nuclear power plants is a traditional and successful R&D field in the AEKI (Atomic Energy Research Institute). Formerly the main subjects of our developments were basically determined by the actual needs and operational problems of the Hungarian Paks NPP. However, at the middle of the last decade AEKI initiated the development and installation of such operator support systems, which were already introduced (and successfully used) in Western nuclear power plants, but were missing from the „toolbox ” of the operators working at the Paks NPP. The related R&D activities at AEKI were facilitated by that fact that in 1995 the AEKI joined the OECD Halden Reactor Project as an Associated Member. In connection with our HRP membership we had access to the state-of-the-art information related to the development of NPP operator support systems and man-machine interface tools and later we could utilize this know-how in our developments to a great extent. Another favourable condition was that – as part of the so called safety enhancement measures – the Paks NPP had started large scale projects containing (or initiating) the reconstruction of existing computer based systems. The most importan