Development of Tele-Alarm and Fire Protection system using Remote Terminal Unit for Nuclear Power Plant

Tele-Alarm and Fire Protection systems are two important echelons of the defense-in-depth approach to achieve a degree of safety necessary in Nuclear Power Plant. Tele-Alarm systems are used to ensure that the operator in every shift performs area surveillance of all the equipment to check their healthiness and identify maintenance requirements. Similarly, Fire Protection Systems play a major role in alerting plant operator for implementation of emergency action and are used to actuate fire-extinguishing systems in the incipient stage so as to minimize the fire damage to structures, systems and components. In this paper we present design & development of Tele-Alarm and Fire Protection System using 8051 Micro-controller based Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) for real time monitoring of area surveillance keys, call buttons, detectors used for detection of water logging, oxygen deficiency & fire hazards and generating control outputs for fire extinguisher via commands received from remotely located control room operator in nuclear power plant like Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) being constructed at Kalpakkam.