💻 Activity 5.1: Nuclear Plant Temperature Alert#

We have just covered the relationship of a process value to a desired set point and discussed the importance of redundancy, especially in systems that have the potential to harm people.

Consider a nuclear reactor. A meltdown would be sufficiently catastrophic that the temperature of the cooling water around the nuclear fuel rods is monitored by four sensors.

An alarm should go off if

  1. any of the two sensors report a temperature greater than 100 degrees Celsius, or

  2. any two of the sensor readings disagree by strictly 8 degrees.

Write a function coolingWaterAlarm(t1,t2,t3,t4) where t1, t2, t3, and t4 are the temperature readings for sensor 1, sensor 2, sensor 3, and sensor 4, respectively.

The function should print

  1. Alarm! Temperatures differ. if the first condition above is met,

  2. Alarm! Temperatures exceed 100 deg Celsius. if the second condition above is met, or

  3. Normal operation if neither condition is met.

#write your function below
...

import numpy as np


def coolingWaterAlarm(t1, t2, t3, t4):
    tlist = [t1, t2, t3, t4]
    # if (
    #     abs(t2 - t1) > 8
    #     or abs(t3 - t1) > 8
    #     or abs(t4 - t1) > 8
    #     or abs(t3 - t2) > 8
    #     or abs(t4 - t2) > 8
    #     or abs(t4 - t3) > 8
    # ):
    # option 2
    if max(tlist) - min(tlist) > 8:
        output = "Alarm! Temperatures differ."
    elif sorted(tlist, reverse=True)[1] > 100:
        output = "Alarm! Temperatures exceed 100 deg Celsius."
    else:
        output = "Normal operation"
    print(f"{output}")

# use this call to test your function
coolingWaterAlarm(93,95,96,101)

# use this call to test your function
coolingWaterAlarm(95,103,96,101)

# use this call to test your function
coolingWaterAlarm(90,95,96,101)