Development of requirements and criteria of smart valve with sensor for nuclear power plants

Valves integrated with a smart positioner have been developed at many sites. We have been developing a smart valve with a sensor for a nuclear power plant, which is performed a process sensing function and a process control function automatically. The smart valve has the functions as follows; self-sensing, auto-tuning, multi-communication, self-diagnosing, etc. The smart valve should satisfy the nuclear criteria for a nuclear application. In this paper, we developed the requirements and criteria for the valve, which contain the requirements and criteria for the valve body, the sensing part, the control part, and the communication part. We produced a prototype of the smart valve which could control the pressure on the basis of the requirements. Additionally, we established the test criteria such as the environment test, the seismic test, and the EMI test. On the basis of the requirements and criteria, we are developing a prototype of the gate type-smart valve which contains the valve body, the control circuit, the communication circuit, and the application software. The smart valve can reduce the installation costs and the maintenance costs of nuclear power plants.