A technology, which is able to monitor and control from outside while observing the accident site in real time, has been developed which can be used in the event of an emergency, such as a serious accident at a nuclear power plant.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has revealed on March 8 that the institute developed ``Nuclear black box``, a measuring and control system that can be used in extreme situations such as high temperature and high radiation due to nuclear accidents, and ``mobile remote monitor and controlling system``, which is able to monitor and control emergency situation based on black box data.

The black box is able to transmit accident site data such as temperature, pressure, hydrogen concentration, radiation dose, reactor water level, and CCTV information of the power plant to satellite remote control room. The equipment is designed to operate in a difficult environment such as an external temperature of 80 ° C, a radiation dose of 1.2 kGy (kilo gray), and an earthquake strength of 10G. Besides, the equipment operates for up to 72 hours with a rechargeable battery in the case the power supply is cut off due to an accident, and has a waterproof function against immersion and explosion proof against hydrogen gas explosion. The research team is planning to commercialize the equipment by improving its capability to the external temperature to 200 degrees and the surrounding radiation level to 5kGy by 2022.

The remote monitoring control room, which is a vehicle type that is able to process several data collected from the ‘black box’, is operated by one person and developed to monitor and control 8 nuclear power plants at the same time. Also it has been confirmed that the equipment could be remotely controlled through satellites by moving to a place 30 km away from the nuclear power plant.

The study has been conducted in 2011 to prevent the central control room from being damaged and the power supply to be lost due to the failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. The research team is planning to increase the black box performance to an external temperature of 200 ° C and a radiation level of 5kGy and commercialize it by 2022. Nuclear black boxes and mobile remote monitoring and control rooms can be applied to domestic nuclear power plants by 2025.


Kim Chang Ho- director of the Instrumentation Control and Ergonomics Research Division of Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, mentioned, ‘We have started research and development to prevent the situation of extreme failures, such as the Fukushima nuclear accident in which the central control room was damaged. We are planning to promote commercialization until the end of the research and development in early 2022 and apply it to domestic nuclear power plants as well as to export it overseas.’

Daejun=By Lee Jun Gee bongchu@


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