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SPIDAR: System-level Physics-Informed Detection of Anomalies in Reactors

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Nuclear power plants (NPPs) are home to many sensors that can be subject to various anomalies impacting the performance, safety, and reliability of NPPs. These sensor anomalies can arise due to degradation over time or as a result of various external factors. Anomaly detection models can be utilized to detect the presence of sensor errors in NPPs. Specifically, given the physical relationships present between sensed parameters in an NPP, physics-informed machine learning models can be developed to take advantage of the underlying physics of the system, described by physical equations, to ensure the model predictions remain physically consistent. As such, this study proposes SPIDAR: System-level Physics-Informed Detection of Anomalies in Reactors, a novel generative physics-informed system-level anomaly detection model for NPPs to detect sensor errors. Using data collected from a flow loop testbed, this study shows that SPIDAR can successfully detect anomalies present in an array of sensor data. Indeed, this study shows that SPIDAR outperforms state-of-the-art anomaly detection models, specifically a physics-uninformed GAN-based approach, highlighting the potential application of physics-informed machine learning for system-level anomaly detection in NPPs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 13th Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface Technologies, NPIC and HMIT 2023
PublisherAmerican Nuclear Society
Pages1124-1133
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9780894487910
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event13th Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface Technologies, NPIC and HMIT 2023 - Knoxville, United States
Duration: Jul 15 2023Jul 20 2023

Publication series

NameProceedings of 13th Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface Technologies, NPIC and HMIT 2023

Conference

Conference13th Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface Technologies, NPIC and HMIT 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityKnoxville
Period07/15/2307/20/23

Keywords

  • anomaly detection
  • generative adversarial networks
  • nuclear power plants
  • physics-informed machine learning

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