Detection of Sensor Degradation Using K-means Clustering and Support Vector Regression in Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

In a nuclear power plant (NPP), periodic sensor calibrations are required to assure sensors are operating correctly. However, only a few faulty sensors are found to be rectified. For the safe operation of an NPP and the reduction of unnecessary calibration, on-line calibration monitoring is needed. In this study, an on-line calibration monitoring called KPCSVR using k-means clustering and principal component based Auto-Associative support vector regression (PCSVR) is proposed for nuclear power plant. To reduce the training time of the model, k-means clustering method was used. Response surface methodology is employed to efficiently determine the optimal values of support vector regression hyperparameters. The proposed KPCSVR model was confirmed with actual plant data of Kori Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3 which were measured from the primary and secondary systems of the plant, and compared with the PCSVR model. By using data clustering, the average accuracy of PCSVR improved from 1.228×10-4 to 0.472×10-4 and the average sensitivity of PCSVR from 0.0930 to 0.0909, which results in good detection of sensor drift. Moreover, the training time is greatly reduced from 123.5 to 31.5 sec.