Protection of Instruments
The need for more reliable and steady electric power supplies results from the increasing demand for sensitive (and often sophisticated) electronic instruments for industry, hospitals, research laboratories and modern offices. A number of disturbances (black-outs, brown-outs, voltage fluctuations, transient voltages, spikes and noise) which contaminate the mains may cause serious problems in the instruments based on more advanced technologies, including such effects as loss of memory data or even damage to electronic equipment. Similarly, high humidity, especially at higher temperatures as well as dust and other air contaminants may also have harmful effects on the instruments including changes of the electrical characteristics of electronic components and giving rise to malfunction, particularly of high voltage parts.
Performance evaluation of the instruments provided to the developing countries by a number of donor organizations, including the IAEA, demonstrates that about 50% of reported equipment breakdowns can be attributed to power line disturbances (in the case of computers the figure is even higher and approaches 80% of all malfunctions). Looking at the data one can immediately notice that protection of the instruments against power line disturbances might be one of the most efficient preventive maintenance measures.
The problem of influence of electric supply and environment on the reliable functioning and long life of nuclear and nuclear research related instruments has long been recognized by the Agency's Laboratories in Seibersdorf. As a consequence of this a number of national and regional training courses (workshops) on protection of instruments have been organized and this topic is invariably included in the program of an annual group fellowship training in maintenance of nuclear spectroscopy instruments held in Seibersdorf. The IAEA Laboratories are also involved in transferring basic knowledge on power conditioning to the Agency's technical and procurement officers. In addition, a number of power line disturbance analyzers and typical power conditioning kits have been distributed to selected Laboratories in the developing Member States in order to assist local research and training activities.