Electronics in nuclear power plants

Electronics and nuclear energy are two fields which are both recent in their applications and the two have been contributing to the success of each other. The nuclear reactions act in milliseconds (or faster) and have demanded development of fast measurement and control devices. While the early nuclear power plants restricted the use of electronic devices to the nuclear reactor, the recent plants have widely adopted the electronic process control instruments and digital computers. Centralised control demanded by larger plants coupled with the reducing cost and improving realiability of electronic instruments have contributed to the trend. The digital computers have facilitated faster, wider and more flexible collection of data and have also provided better man-machine interfaces. Their use has also been extended to performing logic functions and performance calculations. It is expected that they will get into the field of direct control of process parameters.In India, the development of digital computers ...