Integration of OT and IT helps overcome complex challenges, says Neil White, Digital Consultant for Capula’s recently launched consultancy services
Nuclear power is poised to play a crucial role in the UK’s pursuit of net-zero emissions targets. Nuclear power is a reliable, low-carbon technology that drives energy independence, creates high-quality jobs, and fosters economic growth.
This article explores how digitalisation and integration of Operational Technologies (OT) and Information Technologies (IT) can enable nuclear energy plants to achieve competitiveness, resilience, and sustainability.
In the UK, 16 per cent of our electricity was generated through 13 nuclear plants spread across the country in 2020. This provides clean energy to nearly 12 million homes annually in the UK. The government aims for up to 95% of the UK’s electricity to come from low-carbon sources by 2030. Along with renewable energies like wind, solar, and hydrogen, nuclear is poised to play a part in these plans. The government proposes increasing civil nuclear to up to 24GW by 2050 – three times more than now- representing up to 25% of projected electricity demand.
Overcoming Complex Digital Challenges
With so much emphasis on nuclear energy, nuclear power plants’ digital transformation and management have become a focal point in recent years. Advanced technologies are being adopted to ensure safety and environmental compliance throughout the plant’s lifecycle, including design, construction, operation, and dismantling. However, several challenges must be addressed, such as cyber security, upgrading skills, and integrating new technologies into existing regulatory frameworks.
Adopting a holistic approach to overcome these complex digital challenges is essential. Rather than focusing solely on technology, the success of digitalisation efforts relies on considering the pillars of people, process, and culture. Deploying the best technology solutions alone will only suffice if the workforce, workflows, and organisational culture are aligned with the change. Stakeholder interaction and early engagement are vital to project success.
Our approach to solving these complex digital challenges is rooted in outcome-based methodology. We begin by understanding the desired outcome and work our way back, considering the business drivers, effects, and insights that support the process. We prioritise the impact on all the stakeholders throughout each stage, ensuring alignment with the business’s core objectives.
Following this approach, we strongly emphasise considering the business aspects at every step. Rather than selecting technologies based on their merits, we take a comprehensive view of the original scope and choose technologies that address all business requirements.
This approach has been successfully applied to our customers in the nuclear industry. For instance, one of our recent customers aimed to enhance maintenance through predictive analysis for regulatory compliance. Instead of discarding their existing systems, which they believed couldn’t meet their ongoing business challenges, we leveraged the rich data source within their current system. We built an additional capability layer on the existing infrastructure, addressing their maintenance and reporting needs. This approach gave them valuable visualisations and data analysis to support their evolving business and operational requirements.
Digital Transformation with OT/IT Integration Strategies
In pursuing best practices and improved outcomes, nuclear operators look to other industries for guidance. Key technology trends include the adoption of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) solutions and an open architecture approach, which allow for seamless integration with legacy systems. Additionally, leveraging cloud computing can facilitate the analysis of vast amounts of data, enabling enhanced operational and maintenance improvements.
This can be achieved with careful design of Cloud services in the nuclear sector by including strict security boundaries to mitigate cyber threats.
One of the critical factors in driving digital transformation within nuclear power plants is the integration of OT and IT. Combining these domains leads to higher productivity, improved risk management, compliance, and streamlined operations.
Traditionally, OT and IT have been developed separately, resulting in different data languages used by OT devices, such as RTUs, valves, and actuators, which are not easily understandable by modern computers.
Data cleansing and standardisation are necessary to bridge the gap between OT and IT to improve data quality and enable recalculations and compression. This complex process requires thorough analysis, planning, and often collaboration between technology suppliers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It involves specialised data engineering that operates outside the realm of IT, necessitating specialist support to facilitate the integration.
Additionally, operational insights regarding machine and asset performance traditionally reside solely within the domain of the site engineering team. The data displayed on operational computers via HMIs (Human-Machine Interface) is typically incomprehensible to those who need specialised training. However, it’s known that each asset generates a wealth of data points, which are often stored somewhere within the organisation. The challenge lies in making this data available to the broader enterprise with the appropriate context, providing valuable insights for process intelligence. This includes aspects such as asset condition monitoring, the impact of internal or external events on asset operation and structure, the behaviour of electricity as it traverses the grid to consumers or critical event management.
In summary, integrating OT and IT involves addressing the differences in data languages and leveraging specialist support for data cleansing and standardisation. Furthermore, it requires making operational insights accessible to the broader organisation, enabling valuable process intelligence and decision-making.
Digital transformation holds immense potential for nuclear power plants. Organisations can unlock value and achieve new working methods by adopting a contextual approach to OT and IT integration and considering the broader business context. It is crucial to emphasise the importance of aligning technology initiatives with the overarching business objectives and involving all stakeholders from the outset. With the right approach, nuclear plants can embrace digitalisation to drive safety, efficiency, and environmental stewardship.
