POWER May 2013 - 88

INSTRUMENTATION & CONTROL
Mexico Uses Nuclear Plant
Simulator for Safe Training
Mexico's Federal Electrical Commission needed a safe way to train new operators
at its Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Veracruz, so it developed
a stand-alone process simulator that allows trainees to practice a wide
variety of plant operations and responses to incidents without putting the
plant itself at risk.
By Jesús Vázquez Bustos and Octavio Gómez Camargo, Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas
E
lectric power plant owners have to face
higher production and efficiency demands
under tighter schedules these
days. Furthermore, the need to be competitive
in a globalized world requires them to
observe and comply with more international
standards and regulations; therefore, operation
and maintenance personnel must be
trained to deal with higher production requirements
and be certified to comply with
new international standards and regulations.
Plant owners and operators have much to
gain by implementing appropriate personnel
training. Comprehensive training programs
are critical not only for plant owners but also
for everyone involved in plant operations, as
such programs can significantly improve not
only safety but also plant performance in both
functional and financial terms. Because time
is always scarce, automated software systems
that are flexible, scalable, easy to use, and
easy to learn are the best for facilitating and
enhancing the training process.
Training Requirements at Laguna
Verde Nuclear Power Plant
Mexico's National Electric Power Co.,
Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Federal
Electrical Commission, or CFE by its acronym
in Spanish), is the second-largest stateowned
company in Mexico in terms of budget
and employees. Currently, CFE generates,
distributes, and markets electric power for
almost 33.8 million residential and industrial
customers, which currently represents almost
100 million people, and more than a million
new customers are incorporated every year.
CFE operates several thermoelectric, hydroelectric,
coal-fired, nuclear, geothermal,
wind-powered, and combined cycle power
generating facilities. It also has responsibility
for the management, control, and development
of Mexico's electric grid, which has
more than 742,000 kilometers of transmission
and distribution power lines. The infrastructure
to generate electric power consists
88
of 177 generating plants with an installed
total capacity of 51,081 MW.
Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant
(LVNPP) is the only nuclear power plant
in operation in Mexico. It belongs to CFE's
power generation division and is located in
the state of Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico. The plant has two independent
power generation units with BWR-5 type reactors.
The two 682.5-MW units provide a
total plant capacity of 1,365 MW. The first
unit started operation in August 1990; the
second unit followed in April 1995.
LVNPP has developed several instruction
and training programs to comply with recent
international regulations. In order to further
improve the quality of their training programs,
the training department of LVNPP appointed
the Enabling Technologies Division of the
Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas (Electric
Research Institute or IIE) to design and
build a plant process simulator (SIMPRO) to
facilitate and support the training and certification
processes of the plant's personnel. The
plant process simulator consists of a physical
reproduction (though a simplified version) of
selected systems in the operating plant that are
integrated with a digital control center.
Detailed Simulator 3-D Design
The development and use of virtual 3-D models
is a common practice in industries that frequently
design new products. Computer-aided modeling
has been demonstrated to be a cost-effective
and useful technique to develop virtual models
that represent in a very realistic and detailed way
the characteristics, operation, and performance
of the elements or systems to be manufactured.
This practice allows pre-visualization of the results
and comparison against the expected functionality
of the finished product, ahead of the
manufacturing or construction stages.
These techniques have been adopted by
designers in other fields, such as engineering,
1. Make the model. The simulated plant was first created as a 3-D model. Courtesy: IIE
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