Development of A Test Apparatus for Control Rod Drive Mechanism in Nuclear Power Plants

In this paper, a DSP-based test apparatus for Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) that is used in nuclear power plants is described. Using this apparatus, we can test the mechanical and electrical characteristics of CRDM and obtain some information about how to improve the CRDM further and how to design a power controller to actuate the CRDM. Since firing angles can be directly applied to the gate-drive circuits of thyristors in the power controller by using this apparatus, the maximum and minimum values of firing angles within available limits are easily measured. Also step-current inputs help us investigate each coil's response characteristics. Therefore, we can easily find the range of control gains which enables a stable CRDM operation in insertion and withdrawal actions at high speed, mid speed, and low speed. Since this apparatus has a test mode in which an insertion or withdrawal action is divided into several phases so that the current command for each phase is given step by step, we may judge whether the CRDM works as expected or not. We also describe a fault detection capability of the test apparatus for the power controller by using discrete Fourier transform.