Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Nuclear Engineering and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucengdes

Estimation of sensor measurement errors in reactor coolant systems using

multi-sensor fusion☆
Nageswara S.V. Rao a, 1, **, Christopher Greulich a, *, 2, Pradeep Ramuhalli a, 3, Anil Gurgen b, 4,
Fan Zhang c, 5, Sacit M. Cetiner a, 6
a
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1 Bethel Valley Road, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, United States
b
Department of Nuclear Engineering, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7909, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States
c
Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee, 1412 Circle Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A nuclear power plant is typically instrumented with a variety of sensors to continually monitor its variables, and
Nuclear power plant their sensor’s measurements may be used to assess the plant state and initiate safety actions, if needed. Errors in
Primary coolant system sensor measurements, due to factors such as calibration drifts, critically affect such state assessments. We address
Sensor Drift
a problem of estimating sensor errors using physics-informed machine learning methods that use measurements
Senor errors
collected under known plant conditions. For a given sensor, we propose an information fusion method that uses
Machine learning
Multiple sensor fusion measurements from other sensors to estimate its output assuming it is error-free and provides its difference from
an actual measurement as an error estimate. We present the ensemble of trees and support vector machine fusers,
and evaluate their performance using measurements collected over an emulated test loop of a pressurized water
reactor. The plant variables are related to each other through the underlying physical laws under inertial con­
straints that place bounds on their derivatives, which analytically justify the applicability of machine learning
methods for computing these fusers. Under twenty scenarios, we assess their sensor error estimates for pressure
sensors of the heat exchanger of a reactor’s primary coolant system. Multiple types of errors are captured by both
fusers under externally induced calibration drifts, blockages, minor leaks and air gaps in sensing lines, and
electromagnetic interference; the root mean square error of the estimation of error is under 2.2% percent of the
maximum measurement. We present generalization equations, in the framework of statistical learning theory, for
these methods that characterize the confidence probability that the estimation error is bounded by a specified
parameter in future test scenarios.

1. Introduction for its continued safe operation. The monitoring systems of these plants
consist of extensive sensor instrumentation that measures critical vari­
State estimation of a nuclear power plant is a critical part of ensuring ables such as temperature, pressure, flow rate, and radiation levels.
its operational health, in particular, in supporting decisions on actions These measurements may be used in assessing the plant state, and hence

☆
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government
retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide
license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these
results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
* Corresponding author.
* Principle corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: raons@ornl.gov (N.S.V. Rao), greulichcr@ornl.gov (C. Greulich).
1
ORCID(s): 0000-0002-3408-5941
2
ORCID(s): 0000-0002-9047-6592
3
ORCID(s): 0000-0001-6372-1743
4
ORCID(s): 0000-0002-2304-8061
5
ORCID(s): 0000-0002-8094-2473
6
ORCID(s): 0000-0002-0459-8420

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2020.111024
Received 7 July 2020; Received in revised form 4 December 2020; Accepted 5 December 2020
Available online 20 February 2021
0029-5493/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
N.S.V. Rao et al.
their accuracy is very important for quantifying the health of plant and
its components. Over time, aging sensors can experience slow drifts in
their calibrated responses, which typically lead to gradual errors that are
often too subtle to be detected by simple threshold methods. More
generally, errors in sensor measurements can be caused by a variety of
factors such as blockage, leaks and air gaps in sensor feed lines, process
and electronic noise, and Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI). In these
cases, the sensor measurement errors, if not identified and addressed
promptly, can negatively impact the critical decisions on operational
and preemptive actions (Ramuhalli et al., 2017).
Periodic re-calibration of sensors is a well-known mitigation
approach against drift errors which are quite common in power plants.
However, this approach incurs cost and increases the potential for mis-
calibration; furthermore, other errors such as minor leakages may be
masked by re-calibrations, thereby preventing early detection of certain
incipient errors. On-line estimation of sensor errors could help transition
from such a planned periodic re-calibration approach to an on-demand
condition-based approach that re-calibrates sensors only after they
develop errors. Indeed, on-line sensor error estimation from measure­
ments is an integral part of such an approach and has the potential to
provide cost savings in operations while maintaining or improving plant
reliability (Hashemian, 2011).
We consider a simplified version of a sensor error estimation problem
for the primary coolant loop of a pressurized water reactor (PWR),
shown schematically in Fig. 1 as a part of a nuclear power plant. In this
paper, we present an information fusion method to estimate sensor er­
rors by combining measurements from multiple sensors, apply it to
pressure sensors of a primary coolant loop, and evaluate its performance
under twenty test scenarios. The sensors measure plant variables that are
related to each other by physical laws, which in turn are based on the
fluid flow and thermodynamic properties of the primary coolant loop.
By exploiting these relationships, we estimate a selected plant variable
by fusing measurements from multiple sensors that measure the same or
other variables. In particular, the underlying relationship, between
sensor measurements and the selected variable, is estimated as a
regression function. This regression function is computed by a machine
learning (ML) method using measurements collected under known plant
conditions during an observation period when sensors are error-free
except for measurement noise. Based on sensor measurements at a
given time, the regression estimate of this variable is subtracted from its
sensor measurement to estimate the sensor error. For the sensor error
estimation, a majority of sensors measurements are considered essen­
tially error-free, except for minor drifts and random noise that are
typical under normal plant operations.
We present the ensemble of trees (EOT) and support vector machines
Fig. 1. Illustration of a primary coolant loop of a nuclear power plant (from
www.euronuclear.org), with nominal sensor placements corresponding to the
general placement of sensors in the simplified test loop. Considerably more
sensors are deployed throughout systems in actual plants.
2
Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024
(SVM) methods to train fusers that combine sensor measurements to
estimate the regression function for the plant variable. We assess the
performance of these estimates under twenty controlled test scenarios of
a laboratory flow loop that emulates the primary coolant system
wherein errors are externally introduced. Results indicate that sensor
errors in three different pressure sensors are captured by both methods,
and their root mean square error (RMSE) is typically within 2.2%
percent of the maximum sensor measurement.7 The RMSE is expressed
here as a percentage with the normalization to the maximum sensor
value of the non-drifited scenario. This normalization is needed to
objectively compare the results across the scenarios, since the errors are
induced in sensors with different ranges and units.
To complement the experimental results, we present analytical re­
sults that characterize the generalization performance of the sensor
error estimates on future measurements under the distribution-free ML
formulation (Vapnik, 1998). We first show the applicability of ML
methods in general by utilizing the smoothness property of the under­
lying regressions using a first-order model of the coolant loop, in
particular, the inertial properties of plant variables. We derive the
generalization equations for EOT and SVM that establish that the un­
derlying problem is effectively solvable by the two methods, and their
form reflects the specific estimator properties. By utilizing smoothness
(bounded Lipschitz constant of SVM) and non-smoothness (fixed num­
ber of finite jumps of EOT) properties, they guarantee that the gener­
alization error is bounded by a specified parameter with a confidence
probability that improves with the number of training measurements.
We provide, here, detailed derivations of the generalization equations,
expanding upon the brief summary presented in Rao et al. (2019a). To
our knowledge, these are first generalization results for this class of
sensor error estimation problems, since existing results are primarily
limited to uncertainties derived using available measurements and
propagating them through simple analytical models or codes (Ramuhalli
et al., 2017).
Both EOT and SVM methods have been applied in other fields for
solving related fault detection problems (Kusiak and Li, 2011; Banerjee
and Das, 2012). In nuclear power plants, the auto associative kernel
regression (AAKR) method has been used for fault detection (Ma and
Jiang, 2011), which is related to the error estimation considered here.
Error estimation is formulated as a regression problem, whereas the fault
detection problem is typically formulated as a Boolean classification
problem, and consequently they require somewhat different approaches.
EOT and SVM represent two different approaches for providing non-
smooth and smooth regression estimates, respectively. The AAKR
method uses an auto-association approach to generate error estimates by
using the corresponding model residuals. However, in this mode, all
sensors (including erroneous ones) are used in computing the residuals.
Consequently, large sensor errors can percolate through the residual
computations, resulting in highly inaccurate error estimates in some
cases (example in Section 5.1). Instead, our results using the hetero-
association mode show that both EOT and SVM estimates avoid such
error propagation and consequently, provide better accuracy in cases
with large sensor errors and comparable performance in other cases.
This paper is organized as follows. We describe the emulation testbed
used for collecting sensor measurements in Section 2. Twenty experi­
mental scenarios are described in Section 3. Our proposed information
fusion method and its EOT and SVM implementations for generating
sensor error estimates, and their RMSE results are described in Sections
7
Early results on this regression estimation method have been briefly pre­
sented in Rao et al. (2019b) with empirical results for a single differential
pressure sensor of the heat exchanger. In this paper, we expand on these results,
and also provide analytical justification for the proposed fusers in terms of their
applicability based on an analytical model of the primary coolant system and
the generalization equations that quantify their performance on future test
data.
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

4 and 5, respectively. We describe a simple analytical model of the Table 1

primary coolant loop in Section 6 and establish the applicability of ML
methods. The generalization equations for EOT and SVM methods are
presented in Section 7. A summary and conclusions are presented in
Section 8.
2. Primary coolant loop and testbed
In a primary coolant loop of PWR nuclear power plant, the heat
generated by the source (i.e., nuclear fuel) is carried away by the coolant
and exchanged with the secondary coolant system in a heat exchanger as
illustrated in Fig. 1. Then, the coolant is circulated back to the source at
a lower temperature, which is regulated by the flow rate controlled by
the circulation pumps. For example, the flow rate may be dynamically
adjusted to maintain a constant return temperature at the reactor inlet or
a constant temperature difference between inlet and outlet. The primary
coolant loop variables, such as temperature, pressure and flow rate, are
measured by multiple sensors deployed at various locations along the
coolant loop. These measurements are used for estimating the plant state
which may be used for set-point feedback control of the coolant loop,
and also for decision support for initiating preventive or shutdown
actions.
An experimental testbed that emulates a primary coolant loop
developed by Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation (Ramu­
halli et al., 2017) is shown in Fig. 2. Here, an electric heater is used to
emulate the reactor power source. The coolant loop is monitored by
twelve pressure sensors, six temperature sensors and one flow sensor,
which are at different locations shown in Fig. 2. We focus on six dif­
ferential pressure (DP) sensors, which we will refer to as Weed-D1Q,
Foxboro-D3I, Rosemount-D4K, Safir-D2R, Weed-D5S, and Barton-C2U,
and one pressure sensor, Kulite-C1V, in this study. Four of the DP sen­
sors, Weed-D1Q, Foxboro-D3I, Rosemount-D4K, and Safir-D2R, monitor
the pressure drop across the heat exchanger, namely, pressure difference
between hot and cold legs, at the same points on the coolant loop. The
DP sensors, Weed-D5S and Barton-C2U, also measure the pressure drop
across the heat exchanger but between different locations on the coolant
loop. The sensor Kulite-C1V measures the pressure at a single location on
the cool leg of the loop. While providing some redundancy, the sensors
are not identical, and they differ in designs, measurements or locations,
and are somewhat complementary since they measure the same un­
derlying phenomena. The six sensors have different units or ranges as
shown in Table 1.
We address the problem of estimating errors in the pressure sensors
Rosemount-D4K, Kulite-C1V, and Barton-C2U by exploiting the
Sensors have different measurement units and ranges.
Sensor Units Range
Weed-D1Q inches of H2O 0–850
Weed-D5S inches of H2O 0–250
Rosemount-D4K inches of H2O 0–750
Barton-C2U inches of H2O 123–133
Foxboro-D3I PSI 0–50
Safir-D2R kPa 0–259
regressions that relate measurements from multiple sensors. The inclu­
sion of different measurement units and ranges of the sensors illustrate
the information fusion of disparate measurements.
3. Twenty test scenarios
We utilize data sets from 20 testbed scenarios listed in Table 2, which
represent different types of sensor errors that are externally induced:
• Normal Operations: Two scenarios under normal operations with no
externally introduced errors (Scenarios 1 and 10: labeled as AMS3
and AMS12);
• Calibration Changes: Eight scenarios with externally introduced cali­
bration changes realized by manually manipulating the sensor cali­
bration settings (Scenarios 2–9: labeled as AMS4-AMS11);
• Blockage: Four scenarios with blockages introduced in sensor feed
lines (Scenarios 11–14: labeled as AMS13-AMS16);
• Minor Leaks: Three scenario with minor leaks introduced in sensor
feed lines (Scenarios 15–17: labeled as AMS17-AMS19);
• Air Gaps: Two scenarios with air gaps introduced in sensor feed lines
(Scenarios 18–19: labeled as AMS20-AMS21); and
• Electromagnetic Interference: One scenario with electromagnetic
interference (Scenario 20: labeled as AMS22).
A dataset for each scenario is collected with the coolant loop oper­
ating over three operational ranges: low, where the heater is off and the
chiller is on; medium, where the heater and the chiller are both on; and
high, where the heater is on while the chiller is off. This process creates
the three distinct operating regions shown in the figures. In Scenarios
2–9, calibration changes are introduced solely in Rosemount-D4K DP
sensor. In other scenarios, introduced errors are affect Rosemount-D4K
(Scenarios 11–13 and 15–19), Kulite-C1V (Scenario 14), and Barton-
C2U (Scenario 20). In all scenarios, measurements are collected at 20
Hz for a period of about 85 min and 20 s.

Table 2
Scenarios identifier numbers, labels and types of error introduced.
# Label Effected Sensor Type of Error

1 AMS3 N/A N/A

2 AMS4 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
3 AMS5 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
4 AMS6 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
5 AMS7 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
6 AMS8 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
7 AMS9 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
8 AMS10 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
9 AMS11 Rosemount-D4K Calibration Change
10 AMS12 N/A N/A
11 AMS13 Rosemount-D4K Blocakge-Feed Line
12 AMS14 Rosemount-D4K Blocakge-Feed Line
13 AMS15 Rosemount-D4K Blocakge-Feed Line
14 AMS16 Kulite-C1V Blocakge-Feed Line
Fig. 2. Testbed for emulation of primary coolant loop of a nuclear power plant. 15 AMS17 Rosemount-D4K Minor Leak-Feed Line
Twelve pressure sensors, six temperature sensors and one flow sensor are placed 16 AMS18 Rosemount-D4K Minor Leak-Feed Line
at different locations on the loop (Ramuhalli et al., 2017). Six differential 17 AMS19 Rosemount-D4K Minor Leak-Feed Line
pressure sensors, Weed-D1Q, Foxboro-D3I, Rosemount-D4K, Safir-D2R, Weed- 18 AMS20 Rosemount-D4K Air Gap-Feed line
19 AMS21 Rosemount-D4K Air Gap-Feed line
D5S, and Barton-C2U, and one pressure sensor, Kulite-C1V (highlighted in
20 AMS22 Barton-C2U EM Interference
yellow), are used in this paper.

3
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

Previous works (Rao et al., 2019b,a) briefly described early empirical

results for some of 20 scenarios. Also, an earlier version of empirical and
analytical results were presented in report (Cetiner et al., 2019) based on
the assumption that the fusers are machine learnable. This paper ex­
pands on the earlier results to all 20 scenarios, while explicitly estab­
lishing the applicability of ML methods (Section 6) and providing
detailed derivations of the generalization equations (Section 7).

4. Sensor error estimation using information fusion

The sensors in a power plant measure variables that are typically

related to each other through the underlying physical laws and con­
straints due to engineering designs. Such relationships provide re­
Fig. 4. Difference between the measurement from a target sensor and its esti­
gressions between variables that are smooth, or non-smooth with the mate obtained by fusing the measurements from other sensors is an estimate of
property that the total variation is bounded; both properties are the sensor error.
conducive to estimation by ML methods (Rao et al., 2005). These re­
lationships capture trends that can be discerned above the sensor noise.
regression function fSVM , and the corresponding function class F SVM
For example, as the temperature is increases twice during a scenario, as
consists of smooth functions as a result of the Gaussian kernels used in
the heater and chiller are cycled through on/off combinations, the
our case (Scholkopf et al., 1999). The EOT method is based on boosting a
pressure measurements correspondingly increase as shown in Fig. 3.
collection of trees that are customized to fit the training data using the
This overall positively correlated relationship between temperature and
AdaBoost method (Freund and Schapire, 1995). It leads to a highly non-
pressure is a result of increases in flow rate to maintain the temperature
smooth regression function fEOT , with associated function class F EOT
set-points of the loop.
consisting of a large collection of trees (Hastie et al., 2001).
We exploit these relationships to learn a regression function for a
target sensor as a function of measurements from other sensors that
5. Empirical results on sensor error estimates
measure the same or different plant variables; we utilize measurements
collected under a scenario with no externally introduced errors for
The 20 test scenarios represent a variety of sensor errors that affect
training. Then, based on sensor measurements collected at a time, the
the reactor’s primary coolant loop, and they can be grouped into three
regression estimate is used as a “predicted” target sensor output
broad categories:
assuming it is error-free. This estimate is subtracted from the actual
measurement to obtain a sensor error estimate at that time, as illustrated
(a) Calibration changes: In eight scenarios (2–9), calibration changes
in Fig. 4. The key idea is that when the target sensor measurement is
are externally introduced into DP sensor Rosemount-D4K to
subjected to an error (for example, due to a sensing line blockage) the
reflect slow, gradual drifts that are typical in power reactor
difference between the actual measurement and estimated “no error”
systems.
regression estimate reflects its measurement error. In particular, the
(b) Sensor feed line effects: Errors in sensor feed lines are introduced in
measurements from the target sensor are not used in the fuser estimate
four blockage scenarios (11–14), three minor leakage scenarios
(unlike in Ma and Jiang (2011)), thereby preventing the inclusion of its
(15–17), and two air gaps scenarios (18–19), which together
error.
represent both gradual and sharp changes; Rosemount-D4K is the
The underlying physical relationships between plant variables are
target of these errors except for one blockage scenario (14) where
expected to form relatively tractable regression surfaces. These surfaces
the target is DP sensor Kulite-C1V.
are expected to be smooth, with a small number of discrete, finite jumps,
(c) EMI effects: In scenario 20, Barton-C2U is subjected to electro­
or some similar variation. The sensor and processing noise effects in
magnetic interference, which has possible secondary effects on
measurements manifest as random variations which are expected to be
other sensors.
“averaged” by the regression function under this formulation. The SVM
and EOT methods are chosen to implement the fuser based on two
To present an overall view, Fig. 5 shows the RMSE of EOT and SVM
different characteristics of the underlying regression, namely, smooth
sensor error estimates for Rosemount-D4K for all 20 scenarios, while the
and non-smooth functions, respectively. SVM uses a non-linear trans­
two scenarios that target other sensors are discussed separately. Both
formation of the feature space X so that it is suitably expanded into
fusers are trained with measurements from Scenario 1, and
regression regions based on Y (Vapnik, 1998). It leads to a smooth

Fig. 3. Measurements for training data set from Scenario 1 and a test data set from Scenario 2. Sensors have different units or ranges: Weed-d1q: 0–850” H20;
Foxboro-d3i: 0–50 PSI; Rosemount-d4k: 0–750” H2O; Safir-d2r: 0–259 kPa; and Weed-d5s: 0–250” H2O.

4
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

Fig. 5. RMSE of sensor error estimates of EOT and SVM information fusion
methods for Rosemount-D4K in Scenarios 1–20. Fig. 6. Sensor error estimates as a percentage for EOT and SVM fusers for the
Rosemount-d4k differential pressure sensor for Scenario 2.
measurements from all other scenarios are used for assessing the error
estimate for the Rosemount-D4K sensor. Fig. 5 shows the RMSE
expressed as a percent of the largest sensor reading of Rosemount-D4K;
for Scenario 1, the RMSE represents the training error. For both fusers,
the RMSE is under 2.2 percent across all scenarios, and EOT achieves a
lower RMSE overall. Scenarios 10, 14, and 20 do not involve external
introduction of errors into the Rosemount-D4K sensor, and yet the RMSE
of the sensor error estimates is comparable to the other cases, albeit
under 2.2 percent. Since no deliberate errors were introduced yet the
regression estimates were similar, this suggests the methods may be
reaching an intrinsic noise or a lower bound thresholds for this problem
formulation. It is interesting to note that these RMSE values are of the
same order as variations in sensor measurements used as input to EOT
and SVM fusers.

5.1. Calibration changes

Measurements from sensors Weed-D1Q, Weed-D5S, Foxboro-D3I,

and Safir-D2R are fused using EOT and SVM, which provide estimates
of the output of Rosemount-D4K, and both fusers are trained using
measurements from Scenario 1. These sensors have different measure­
ment units and ranges, as can be seen in Fig. 3(a). The measurements of
Weed-D1Q, Weed-D5S, and Rosemount-D4K overlap since they use the
same units. Measurements of Safir-D2R are lower since their units are
different with a lower range, and those of Foxboro-D3I are even lower
due to different units and lower range. The measurements under Sce­
nario 2 are shown in Fig. 3(b), where the heater temperature is increased
around the same times and by same amount as in Scenario 1. The cali­
bration settings of Rosemount-D4K are manually adjusted, which
resulted in a gradual lowering of its measurements relative to Weed-
D1Q, while other measurements of other sensors remain close to their
values in Scenario 1. The difference between the measurements of Fig. 7. RMSE of AAKR, EOT and SVM drift estimates.
Weed-D1Q and Rosemount-D4K is used as a ground truth estimate of the
error in Rosemount-D4K measurements. gained by comparing the estimates of these three methods with the
For illustration, the sensor error estimates of EOT and SVM fusers are ground truth error given by the difference between measurements of
shown in Fig. 6 for Scenario 2. The sensor error estimate of SVM deviates Weed-D1Q and Rosemount-D4K sensors shown in Fig. 8(a). These cali­
from the ground truth for most of measurements; in particular, it is less bration errors reflect an important class of drifts that are typically
negative. The error estimate for EOT is more accurate for almost all gradual but can grow large as shown for Scenario 2 in the top plot of
measurements until the second temperature increase, after which it is Fig. 8(a). In this case, the ground truth estimate exceeds 50 during the
somewhat less negative than the ground truth estimate. third phase of the scenario, which is tracked by both EOT and SVM
It is instructive to compare the error estimates of these two methods methods, whereas the AAKR residuals lead to much smaller estimates
with the residuals of AAKR method that are used as its sensor error es­ and hence a higher RMSE. In other scenarios, however, all three
timates. The RMSE for Scenarios 2–9 is shown in Fig. 7 for AAKR, EOT methods are effective due to relatively smaller sensor errors, as indi­
and SVM methods. For Scenario 2, AAKR has a much larger RMSE since cated by their RMSE under 1.8% and within 1% of each other, as shown
the calibration error introduced is large, and the erroneous measure­ in Fig. 7(b).
ments are used in estimating the sensor error, as shown in Fig. 7(a). In
other scenarios, the RMSE is comparable among the three methods, and
AAKR has lower RMSE than EOT in 3 out of 9 scenarios as shown in 5.2. Sensing line blockage errors
Fig. 7(b).
Some qualitative insights into the sensor error estimates can be For scenarios with blockage errors, EOT and SVM fusers are trained

5
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

Fig. 8. Sensor error estimates of three methods and ground truth estimates for Scenarios 2–5 in top plot and Scenarios 6–9 in bottom plot.

using measurements from Scenario 10, which has no externally intro­

duced errors. In Scenarios 11–14, various types of sensing line blockages
are introduced into the differential pressure sensor, Rosemount-D4K,
and the pressure sensor, Kulite-C1V. In Scenarios 11–13, blocking er­
rors are introduced in the hot, cold, and both legs, respectively, of the
sensing lines of Rosemount-D4K. The details of induced errors differ
significantly from scenario to scenario in terms of initial onset time,
duration, intensity and direction. In Scenario 14, blockage is introduced
in the sensing line of Kulite-C1V located in the cold leg, and the mea­
surements mostly result in steady-state errors, as shown in Fig. 9(b).
In these scenarios, measurements of Rosemount-D4K and Kulite-C1V
constitute the dependent variables (in Scenarios 11–13 and 14, respec­
tively) and the independent variable is a 4-dimensional vector of mea­
surements from other four sensors. Overall, results indicate that positive
and negative sensor errors are captured by both methods in scenarios
ranging from slow and small to rapid and large errors. For illustration,
sensor error estimates based on their outputs are shown in Fig. 10 for
Rosemount-D4K in Scenario 11, and in Fig. 11 for Kulite-C1v in Scenario
14. The sensor error in Scenario 11 in Rosemount-D4K is identified by
both, and the estimate from EOT is closer during the initial part and
towards the end of the time period. The error in Scenario 14 is more
subtle and is tracked by both methods in the middle but is overestimated
by both during the first temperature change. The overall trends are
better tracked by EOT than SVM, and both exhibited significant varia­
tions towards the end in response to similar variations in sensor mea­
surements used as input to regression estimates.
The RMSE of EOT and SVM estimates for five blockage scenarios is
shown in Fig. 12, expressed as a percent of the maximum sensor mea­
surement. The estimation error is within 1.44% and 1.63% for EOT and
SVM estimates, respectively, and overall EOT achieved lower values.
Fig. 9. Measurement traces under blockage errors in sensing lines of
5.3. Sensing line leakage and air void errors Rosemount-D4K and Kulite-C1V.

Three cases of minor leakages in the sensing line of Rosemount-D4K

are implemented in Scenarios 15–17, respectively, as follows:

6
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

Fig. 12. RMSE of EOT and SVM estimates under blockage errors in Sce­
narios 11–14.

• a minor leak in its low-side port for the duration of the data run (over
750 ml of water was lost);
• a minor leak in its high-side port for the duration of the data run
(over 400 ml of water was lost);
• a minor leak in both low-side and high-side ports for the duration of
the data run (over 1500 ml of water was lost).

Two cases of air void errors in the sensing line of Rosemount-D4K are
implemented in Scenarios 18 and 19, respectively, as follows:

• an air void in the low-side port for the duration of the data run;
• an air void in the high-side port for the duration of the data run.

Fig. 10. Error estimates of EOT and SVM for Rosemount-D4K in Scenario 11. In all of these scenarios, EOT achieved a lower RMSE than SVM
which consistently overestimated the error, as illustrated in Fig. 13.

5.4. EMI error

For this scenario, a large horn antenna is used to radiate electric

Fig. 11. Drift estimates of EOT and SVM for Kulite-C1V for Scenario 14.

Fig. 13. Sensor error estimates of EOT and SVM in Scenarios 15 and 18.

7
N.S.V. Rao et al. Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024

( )
dQ dm
L t, , , ΔT, ΔP, Po = 0, (1)
dt dt

that relates the power transfer rate dQ dm

dt and mass flow rate dt to the dif­
ferential pressure ΔP = Pi − Po and differential temperature ΔT. The
differential pressure, ΔP, is measured by the sensors Weed-D1Q, Fox­
boro-D3I, Rosemount-D4K, and Safir-D2R; the outlet pressure, Po , is
measured by the sensor Kulite-C1V; sensors Weed-D5S and Barton-C2U
also measure the differential pressure across the heat exchanger but at
different locations on the cold leg. We now derive an explicit version of
Eq. (1) in two steps in a basic form that illustrates the overall bound­
edness of the regression functions that relate sensor measurements8.
Fig. 14. Measurements of Barton-C2U under no error and EMI error scenarios. First, based on Newton’s cooling law of convection we obtain the
relationship
fields at frequencies ranging from 200 MHz to 1 GHz at an electric field dQ
= hAΔT (2)
strength of 10 V/m. The DP sensor Barton-C2U is very susceptible to dt
radiated emissions as evident in the measurements shown in Fig. 14,
which indicate both high frequency, large transients and sustained er­ where dQdt is differential heat transfer rate via the heat exchanger that
rors with smaller variations. The error estimates of EOT and SVM represents the reactor core emulated by the heater in our test loop. The
methods are shown in Fig. 15, which correspond to RMSE of 1.33% and coolant system is set to maintain a constant heater temperature, and the
1.66%, respectively. Both high frequency and sustained errors are coolant is circulated through the heat exchanger by the pump at the
captured by both methods. required flow rate dmdt to maintain it. h is the overall heat transfer coef­
ficient that depends specific type of piping, orientation, and tempera­
6. Thermal–hydraulics model ture/pressure regime of the coolant. A is the heat transfer surface area,
which is a constant determined by the design and construction of the
We consider simplified laws that relate the plant variables measured plant. The flow rate dmdt is included in h. which is a function of the Rey­
by the sensors to the source power level Q at time t. For a heat nolds number, Re, and the Prandtl number, Pr. As a first-order approx­
exchanger, we denote the difference between ingress and egress tem­ imation, the dependence on dm dt is given by
peratures by ΔT, and the ingress and egress pressures by Pi and Po ,
⎛ ⎞
respectively, and the flow rate by dm
dt . We consider the following generic
⎜ Re ⎟(dm)k ( )k
form of a law for the primary coolant system ⎜ ⎟ dm
h ≈ f ⎜( )k , Pr, L ⎟ =c (3)
⎝ ⎠ dt dt
dm
dt

where L is a characteristic length, and k is a constant. Under a steady

state single phase flow, the function f is approximated by a constant c as
shown.
Across the heat exchanger the total pressure drop is the sum of the
pressure drop across the entrance and exit, due primarily to expansion
and contraction, and friction losses (Mills, 1999). Losses due to changes
in acceleration, surface fouling, and extended surface effects are
assumed to be minimal. The entrance and exit losses can be modeled
with Bernoulli’s equation with the loss coefficient combined with the
mass conservation. The friction losses across the heat exchanger can be
modeled by the Fanning friction factor. The combined equation for the
total pressure drop is then
( )2
dm [ ]
dt (1 − σ2i + Ki ) 2fa L (1 − σ2o − Ko )
ΔP = + + (4)
A2 2ρi Dh ρm 2ρo

where fa is Fanning friction factor, ρ is the fluid density, K’s are the loss
coefficients, L is a characteristic length, and Dh is effective hydraulic
diameter. The loss coefficients are weakly dependent on the Reynolds
number, but that will be ignored in this derivation. The friction factor is
dependent on the Reynolds number but the separability assumption of
Eq. (3) can be extended where the constant k can be modified to
incorporate this effect.
By combining the Eqs. (2)–(4), we obtain the following specific form

Fig. 15. Sensor error estimates of EOT and SVM for Barton-C2U under EMI
error for Scenario 20.
8
A precise representation of the underlying physics of this primary coolant
system is much more complicated and beyond the scope of this paper, and these
simplifying assumptions enable us to establish the applicability of the proposed
ML methods in estimating the fusers using measurements.

8
N.S.V. Rao et al.
of Eq. (1),
dQ
− BΔTΔP0.5k = 0 (5)
dt
where B incorporates various constants of the test loop. Then, by
differentiating with respect to t, we have
2
dΔP
= BkΔP40.5k− 1 ddt2Q − 2ΔP dΔT
dt dt
(6)
kΔT
Then, dΔP is upper bounded by dU since at the steady-state operational
dt
region, each variable and its derivative are bounded due to the inertia of
the underlying fluid dynamics of the closed system. Let ΔPi and ΔPj
correspond to random variables representing the measurements of dif­
ferential pressure sensors i and j, respectively. Then, considering that the
expected value of a sensor measurement is close to the actual mea­
surement, we obtain that
dΔPi
dΔPj
is upper-bounded by DU , where ΔP = E[ΔP]is the expected value of ΔP.
The regression of ΔPi as a function of ΔPj = x, denoted by ΔPi,j (x), is a
Lipschitz continuous function with constant DU . This property estab­
lishes that the sensor measurements can be used to estimate those of
others using ML methods with the generalization performance guaran­
tees as described in next section. A similar approach but with a different,
simplified analytic model of the secondary coolant system is used in
other ML methods to (i) develop a custom ML method for reactor power-
level estimation using multi-modal sensor measurements (Rao et al.,
2020b), and (ii) study the external temperature effects on features
extracted from infrared images of the secondary coolant system and
power-level estimation based on them (Rao et al., 2020a).
7. Generalization equations
In statistical learning theory, the generalization refers to the pre­
diction capability of a method on test samples drawn from the same
distribution as the training set (Vapnik, 1998). The generalization
equations specify that the prediction error is bounded by the precision
parameter with a probability called the confidence, independent of the
underlying distribution, which is typically complex and often unknown.
We derive the generalization equations for EOT and SVM methods used
for sensor error estimation in this section. More generally, these
generalization equations provide critical performance insights into ML
methods:
• The existence of these equations establishes that the underlying
estimation problem is solvable in principle by ML methods9.
• The specific form of a generalization equation provides important
qualitative information: in this case it shows that increasing the
training set size and decreasing the number of parameters of EOT or
SVM each independently leads to improved confidence. Such clear
separation is a consequence of the smoothness properties of under­
lying partial regressions of the primary coolant system variables
described in previous section.
7.1. Regression formulation
The sensor error estimation can be cast as a regression problem by
identifying the sensor measurements with independent random variable
9
These equations may not always exist for certain complex problems, such as
estimating a compact state transition map from chaotic iterates.
9
Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024
X and the target sensor output with dependent random variable Y. The
relationship between two random variables X ∈ Rd and Y ∈ R can be
learned as a regression function f ∈ F such that f(X) is an estimate of Y.
In our case, Y is the output of Rosemount-D4K, Kulite-C1V, or Barton-
C2U sensors, and X is a 4-dimensional vector of measurements from
the other four sensors. The expected error of f is
∫
I(f ) = L(f (X), Y)2 dPX,Y . (7)
It characterizes the prediction error of f on a randomly chosen X,
which is an estimate of partial state of coolant system state that is subject
to random sensor errors. The expected best estimate, f * , minimizes I(.)
over F , that is I(f * ) = minI(f). The underlying distribution PY,X is the
f∈F
joint distribution of senor measurements which depends on the under­
lying phenomena of the primary coolant system as well as sensor sys­
tems. Specifically, it encompasses errors in sensing and their
correlations specific to sensors, sampling errors due to time discretiza­
tion, and estimation errors due to codes used for estimating the vari­
ables. A learning method, used by a machine or otherwise, “learns” ̂f
from a set of l samples, (X1 , Y1 ), (X2 , Y2 ), …, (Xl , Yl ), which is a provably
good approximation of f * (Vapnik, 1998). In our case, the Vapnik’s
generalization theory (Vapnik, 1998) establishes that a suitable esti­
mator, ̂f , computed by ML method M, ensures
[ ]
PlY,X I(̂f ) − I(f * ) > ∊ < δM (F M , ∊, l), (8)
where F M is its function class, ∊ > 0 is the precision parameter, and 0 <
δM (.) < 1 is the confidence function. This condition ensures that the
expected error of ̂f is within ∊ of optimal error (of f * ) with probability
1 − δM , irrespective of the underlying data distribution PlY,X . In our sce­
narios, the minimization of empirical error is not assured, and hence we
use the following version of Eq. (8) given by
[ ]
PlY,X I(̂f ) − I(f * ) > ∊ + ̂
∊ <̂δ M (F M , ∊, ̂
∊ , l) (9)
where ̂∊ is the training error associated with computing ̂f . Specifically,
for Rosemount-D4K using EOT, we have ̂f = fEOT ,F M = F EOT , and ̂ ∊ =
0.3947; using SVM we have ̂f = fSVM , F M = F SVM , and ̂ ∊ = 2.48.
To simplify presentation, we estimate δM (.) as a function of ∊, l, and
properties of F M based on smoothness and non-smoothness properties.
The equation in Eq. (8) is expressed in the following generic form for ML
method M
[ ]
PlY,X I(̂f ) − I(f * ) > ∊ < GM (F M , ∊, l)e− gM (∊,l) , (10)
where the functions GM (F , ∊, l), and gM (∊, l) are obtained based on the
specific properties of the method. Typically, gM (∊, l) increases in l, often
linearly, and GM (F , ∊, l) is either fixed or increases more slowly than
exponentially; consequently, the right-hand term decreases in l and can
be made to match a specified value for δM for a large enough sample size.
Under this condition, the generalization error is bounded as
I(̂f ) < I(f * ) +∊ with probability 1 − δM . We derive next the generaliza­
tion equations in the form Eq. (10) for SVM and EOT methods, whose
applicability follows from the inertial properties of the flow rates and
pressure variables, as described in Section 6.
7.2. SVM
Smooth regression estimates are generated by SVM method when
using Gaussian kernels. An important subclass of functions are Lipschitz
continuous functions for which |f(x) − f(x + ∂x)|⩽L‖∂x‖, where L is a
Lipschitz constant. Differentiable functions with a bounded derivative
imply that this condition is satisfied (but not vice versa), wherein the
N.S.V. Rao et al.
maximum derivative can be used as L. This property combined with the
boundedness of variables, pressure, temperature and flow rate of coolant
system, provide generalization equations in terms of the parameters of
fSVM . To simplify the presentation, we consider a generic form given by
∑d
∑ K 2 reactor power plants. We considered a simplified problem of estimating
fSVM = Ni=1 ai e− i=1 (ci − xi ) with NK Gaussian kernels (Scholkopf et al.,
1999) where X = (x1 , x2 , …, xd ) and the parameters are bounded such
that ai ∈ [ − A, A]and ci ∈ [ − C, C]. Then, the magnitude of the derivative
∑d 2
of kernel ai e− i=1 (ci − xi ) is upper-bounded by max(A, C). We obtain an
estimate for Lipschitz constant L = 2NK max(A, C) for fSVM . Then, we
obtain the following confidence function for fSVM
( )2N
32max(A, C) K − ∊2 l/512
δSVM = 8 e (11)
∊
following the derivation in Rao (1999). Here, in GM (F , ∊, l) =
( )2NK
8 32max(A,C) , the number of kernels appears in the exponent of the
∊
ratio of a parameter bound and precision. For SVM, the equations
indicate that ∊ is below 12.6% with 0.95 confidence based on the 200 K
measurements in Scenario 1, under essentially no assumptions on the
underlying measurement and estimation error processes.
7.3. EOT
EOT method generates a non-smooth regression function (Tumer and
Ghosh, 1996; Breiman et al., 1984) of bounded variables, and has a finite
number of jumps. Consequently, the estimate has a bounded finite total
variation V < ∞ (Anthony and Bartlett, 1999), for which the confidence
function is given by
( )
128V − ∊2 l/2048
δEOT = 8g 1 + e
∊
for a suitable function g (Anthony and Bartlett, 1999). For illustration in
our case, we consider the case d = 1, wherein the total variation is the
sum of magnitudes of jumps in function values at its points of discon­
tinuity. Let fEOT consists of NL leaves and B be the upper bound for
dependent variable Y, for example, highest differential pressure. When
viewed in terms of function of X, each leaf corresponds to a region with a
variation at most 2B. By accounting for all leaves, the total variation of
fEOT is upper bounded by 2BNL . Then, we obtain the following confi­
dence function for fEOT
( )
256BN L − ∊2 l/2048
δEOT = 8g 1 + e (12)
∊
by using V = 2BNL in the above formula.
7.4. Discussion
In addition to establishing the existence of ML solutions, the form of
generalization equation in Eq. (10) provides valuable qualitative in­
sights. First term GM (.)depends only on the parameters of the method,
namely, the number of kernels and parameter bounds for SVM, and the
number of leaves for EOT method. The other term gM (.)depends only on
the sample size l and precision parameter, and larger l results in lower
δM (.). This separation, which is a consequence of the inertial property of
the variables of primary coolant system dynamics, highlights a critical
tradeoff for generalization. The training error ̂∊ of either method can be
reduced by increasing the number of method parameters, which can in
turn can lead to potential over-fitting. At the same time, the confidence
is reduced due to increased GM (.), which indicates that a more compli­
cated model does not necessarily generalize well to data outside of the
training set.
10
Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024
8. Conclusions
This work is an initial attempt to develop measurements-based an­
alytics for a well-known class of sensor error estimation problems in
the error in sensor measurements of a plant variable when multiple
sensor measurements of the same or other plant variables are available.
For a given sensor, measurements from other sensors are fused to esti­
mate its output, and its difference from an actual measurement is used as
an error estimate. Using measurements collected under known plant
conditions, the fuser is estimated using the ensemble of trees and sup­
port vector machine methods for pressure sensors of the heat exchanger
of the primary coolant system. The performance of these estimators is
studied under twenty controlled testbed scenarios involving externally
introduced calibration drifts, blockages, minor leaks and air gaps in
sensing lines, and electromagnetic interference, wherein they achieve
RMSE under 2% percent of the maximum measurement. To complement
these experimental results, we also developed generalization equations
for these methods that characterize the confidence probability for
bounded error.
Future directions include expanding the scope to include automatic
detection of drifting sensors and the identification of “less” drifted
sensors that can be used as input to error estimate regressions. In terms
of analytics, it would be of future interest to investigate the effects of
more detailed analytical models of the primary coolant systems, and
study the effect of additional parameters or removal of parameters,
specifically, the impact of complementary vs redundant sensors. Other
future directions include a study of combinations of diverse ML
methods, including their hyper parameters and fusion of their sensor
error estimates. Finally, it would be of future interest to apply these
methods to measurements from operational power plants.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Nageswara S. V. Rao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,
Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Christopher Greulich: Vali­
dation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Pradeep Ramuhalli:
Resources, Writing - review & editing. Anil Gurgen: Formal analysis.
Fan Zhang: Software, Formal analysis. Sacit M. Cetiner: Writing - re­
view & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge AMS Corp. for providing the data
used in this study. This work is supported by DOE NE program under
Sensor Calibration Project and by DOE ASCR Applied Mathematics
Program under Cyber Physical Networks project.
References
Anthony, M., Bartlett, P.L., 1999. Neural Network Learning: Theoretical Foundations.
Cambridge University Press.
Banerjee, T.P., Das, S., 2012. Multi-sensor data fusion using support vector machine for
motor fault detection. Information Sciences 217, 96–107.
Breiman, L., Friedman, J.H., Olshen, R.A., Stone, C.J., 1984. Classification and
Regression Trees. Wadsworth and Brooks.
Cetiner, S.M., Rao, N., Ramuhalli, P., Greulich, C., Devineni, P., Zhang, F., Gurgen, A.,
Agarwal, V., 2019. Determination of Sensor Quality of Calibration Using Advanced
Data Analytics and Machine Learning Methods. Technical Report INL/EXT-19-
55407. Idaho National Laboratory, East Lansing, Michigan.
Freund, Y., Schapire, R.E., 1995. A decision-theoretic generalization of on-line learning
and an application to boosting. Proceedings of Second European Conference on
Computational Learning Theory 23–37.
N.S.V. Rao et al.
Hashemian, H.M., 2011. On-line monitoring applications in nuclear power plants.
Progress in Nuclear Energy 53, 167–181.
Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., Friedman, J., 2001. The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data
Mining, Inference, and Prediction. Springer-Verlag.
Kusiak, A., Li, W., 2011. The prediction and diagnosis of wind turbine faults. Renewable
Energy 36, 16–23.
Ma, J., Jiang, J., 2011. Applications of fault detection and diagnosis methods in nuclear
power plants: A review. Progress in Nuclear Energy 53, 255–266.
Mills, A.F., 1999. Basic heat and mass transfer. Prentice Hall.
Ramuhalli, P., Boring, S., Tipireddy, R., Shumaker, B., Coble, J., Lerchen, M., Nair, A.,
2017. Robust online monitoring technology for calibration assessment of
transmitters and instrumentation. Technical Report PNNL-26919.
Rao, N.S.V., 1999. Simple sample bound for feedforward sigmoid networks with bounded
weights. Neurocomputing 29, 115–122.
Rao, N.S.V., Reister, D.B., Barhen, J., 2005. Information fusion methods based on
physical laws. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 27,
66–77.
11
Nuclear Engineering and Design 375 (2021) 111024
Rao, N.S.V., Ramuhalli, P., Greulich, C., Cetiner, S.M., 2019a. Sensor error estimation for
reactor coolant system with generalization error equations. In: Transactions of the
American Nuclear Society 121.
Rao, N.S.V., Ramuhalli, P., Greulich, C., Cetiner, S.M., Devineni, P., 2019b. Sensor drift
estimation for reactor systems by fusing multiple sensor measurements. IEEE Nuclear
Science Symposium conference record. Nuclear Science Symposium.
Rao, N.S.V., Greulich, C., Ray, W., Hunley, R.D., 2020a. External temperature effects on
thermal features of reactor coolant system and power level estimation. American
Nuclear Society Winter Meeting 759–762.
Rao, N.S.V., Greulich, C., Sen, S., Dayman, K., Hite, J., Ray, W., Hale, R., Nicholson, A.,
Honson, J., Chatin, M.R., Buckley, K.M., Hunley, R.D., Johnson, J., Hesse, H.H.,
Maciera, M., Chai, C., Marcillo, O., Karnowski, T., Wetherington, R., 2020b. Reactor
power level estimation by fusing multi-modal sensor measurements. International
Conference on Information Fusion 1–8.
Scholkopf, B., Burges, C.J.C., Smola, A.J. (Eds.), 1999. Advances in Kernel Methods. MIT
Press.
Tumer, K., Ghosh, J., 1996. Error correlation and error reduction in ensemble classifiers.
Connection Science 8, 385–404.
Vapnik, V.N., 1998. Statistical Learning Theory. John-Wiley and Sons, New York.