January-February 2019 NPJ

Nuclear Plant Journal, January-February 2019 NuclearPlantJournal.com 23 analog system. At its core it’s an interface system for bringing in your signaling conditioning from the plant’s inputs into control systems in the control room. With the acquisition, Framatome is moving the fabrication of that product out of China to Lynchburg, and we’re going to continue to supply it. Today, Framatome is working with utilities that have a significant installed base to go back and replace some of those products, allowing them to plan their modernization strategy. In addition, Framatome and Schneider have an agreement where all of the Foxboro Distributed Control System (DCS) components and the Triconex commercial-grade products are distributed by Framatome globally for the nuclear power industry. The Foxboro DCS is a digital control system, used for the non-safety side balance of plant. All of the balance of plant systems can basically operate and function within that distributed control system. Foxboro DCS is currently installed in a lot of nuclear plants today both in the U.S. and globally. This agreement allows Framatome to buy and procure the latest and greatest products from Schneider Electric as they become available, and it really brings the full capabilities of Schneider into Framatome. For example, though Wonderware software products didn’t come with the deal, Framatome has access toWonderware because it is sold uniquely in Schneider. This arrangement really increases the portfolio of Framatome. Wonderware is an Human Machine Interface (HMI) product that can reside on a Tricon system from an HMI platform. Diablo Canyon, for example, used Triconex safety and non-safety related applications across the entire unit, and integrated them with Wonderware. There’s a lot of flexibility, and pretty much all of the different systems in the plant can be connected throughout those platforms, in addition to other platforms that are within the Framatome portfolio such as the TELEPERM XS. 3. Please highlight Framatome’s strength in data mining, data analytics and other data applications in ensuring safety and economy of the plants? This is something that Framatome is evaluating, and is something that we have done in some of the asset management tools that we had inSchneider. Framatome is looking at some IBM technologies, as well as some technologies that could be brought from Schneider. Data mining is still a new area in nuclear space that hasn’t really been explored or utilized at the same level that it has been in other industries. We’re now trying to evaluate applications for the benefit of the plant and position how we want to go to market. We’re also looking at the predictive side, in particular how to run a predictive analysis on data to improve maintenance programs and ultimately try to reduce Framatome’s digital I&C safety platforms comprise the TELEPERM XS platform and the TRICON platform. They have been used in more than 300 safety-related applications worldwide. (Continued on page 24)