Development of a data-driven decision support system for the efficient operation of the research reactor secondary system

The High-flux Advanced Neutron Application Reactor (HANARO) is a research reactor in the Republic of Korea. The secondary cooling system of HANARO releases heat into the atmosphere via cooling towers and fans. Because a part of the system is exposed to the external atmosphere, the behavior of the secondary cooling system is coupled with atmospheric conditions. However, no procedure exists to reflect such coupling, and the cooling fans are empirically controlled by the operators. This empirical decision-making may increase the workload and reduce operational efficiency; therefore, the cooling fan operational schemes must be improved. In this study, a decision support system is developed based on two artificial intelligence (AI) models to aid operators’ decision-making in controlling the cooling fans. During model development, data augmentation was applied to alleviate data imbalances. Additionally, a graphical user interface-based decision support system prototype was developed based on the models to provide operators with more comprehensive summaries of the information related to cooling-fan operations and outputs from the AI models. The models demonstrated acceptable performance on the testing data. The prototype system was installed in the main control room of HANARO and evaluated for its usability improvements and feasibility in practical applications.