DESIGN OF WIRELESS HETEROGENEOUS FRAMEWORK FOR RADIATION MONITORING IN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

Radiation monitoring plays a vital role in the safe and efficient operation of the nuclear power plant (NPP). The current radiation monitoring system (RMS) generally uses cable monitoring network with distributed radiation monitors. It will introduce various compatibility issues that more detector nodes are added to the existing cable monitoring network. The communication protocols from different device manufacturers are not compatible. Furthermore, the original RMS has to be shut down for rewiring and reconstruction. In this paper, a heterogeneous framework is proposed based on the wireless sensor network (WSN) technology , for monitoring environmental conditions around and inside NPP, specifically, radiation levels. The proposed full-scope RMS has a no-wiring and no-construction upgraded scheme based on the WSNs, which forms a heterogeneous multi-networks fusion control system, and does not affect the existing NPP radiation monitoring facilities. The introduction of the wireless gateway to build heterogeneous monitoring framework makes it possible to complete the system seamless upgrade with a lower cost and higher feasibility.