Development of earthquake instrumentation for shutdown and restart criteria of the nuclear power plant using multivariable decision-making process

This article presents a new design of earthquake instrumentation that is suitable for quick decision-making after the seismic event at the nuclear power plant (NPP). The main objective of this work is to ensure more availability of the NPP by expediting walk-down period when the seismic wave is incident. In general, the decision-making to restart the NPP after the seismic event requires more than 1 month if an earthquake exceeds operating basis earthquake level. It affects to the plant availability significantly. Unnecessary shutdown can be skipped through quick assessments of operating basis earthquake, safe shutdown earthquake events, and damage status to structure, system, and components. Multidecision parameters such as cumulative absolute velocity, peak ground acceleration, Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, floor response spectrum, and cumulative fatigue are discussed. The implementation scope on the field-programmable gate array platform of this work is limited to cumulative absolute velocity, peak ground acceleration, and Modified Mercalli Intensity. It can ensure better availability of the plant through integrated decision-making process by automatic assessment of NPP structure, system, and components.