In 2011 Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd. undertook a modernization program for their TRUSTIE steam generator inspection systems, to meet the evolving needs of their customers. A major challenge was to miniaturize the original TRUSTIE motion control, motor drive, and instrumentation systems, so that they could be relocated within the containment building and operated remotely via fibre-optic Ethernet interface. The new control systems and software had to maintain complete compatibility with the original TRUSTIE mechanical systems. This paper will discuss the challenges involved in the development of this novel system. Examples will be given from the new system’s first deployment to inspect steam generators at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station A during a planned maintenance outage in early 2012.

This paper describes our progress in the development of a novel technique of dynamic range expansion we call DRE. The resulting algorithms provide 16 effective bits and a spurious-free dynamic range of 96dB for most RF digitizers