A major focus of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Cable Nondestructive Examination (NDE) 2021 research is to acquire new equipment and integrate it with existing NDE instruments for a cable motor test bed which has been dubbed the Accelerated and Real Time Experimental Nodal Analysis or “ARENA”. All the primary components have been received and are being staged in the 2410 Stevens building on PNNL’s Richland campus. Building modifications to support a plug-in 480VAC receptacle have been completed and details of the system operating procedure (SOP) are in review. The approved SOP is required before the system is energized but is expected before July 2021.
The ARENA system will support planned cable tests for 2021 and beyond that cannot conveniently be performed with on-site installations of cable test equipment including:
• NDE Tests including Frequency Domain Reflectometry (FDR), Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR), Tan Delta (TD) Impedance measurements, Low Frequency Dielectric Spectroscopy (DS) measurements, standard multi-meter resistance checks, withstand tests and other bulk and distributed tests from the instrument panel with and without motors connected.
• Online energized live wire tests using partial discharge instruments and LIVE-WIRE spread-spectrum TDR instruments.
• Cable tests with partially submerged cable segments (including ability to submerge live cable segments).
• Cable tests with partially or completely thermally aged segments (including ability to expose energized cable segments to thermal aging and use online monitoring instruments to monitor cable performance.
• Ability to introduce low resistance simulations of connector or splice faults to off-line and on-line instrument setups.