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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
G. C. Geisler, R. E. Zindler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 48 | Number 3 | July 1972 | Pages 255-265
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22484
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An improved method, called Simulation of System Operation for Reliability Analysis, for utilizing Monte Carlo techniques in the computer analysis of the reliability of complex systems is presented. This method is particularly applicable to systems which employ highly reliable elements with extremely low failure rates. Earlier techniques of Brunot simulate operation of a system through a sequential series of time steps and test for system failure in each time step. After a sufficient number of time steps, a system failure probability can be determined. When such methods are applied to systems composed of highly reliable components, computer time requirements can become excessive. This is due to the great number of time steps which must be examined to obtain statistically significant numbers of system failures. The method to be described begins by randomly selecting a “critical’ ’ time step of failure for each component. Failures are then examined to determine if a system failure combination has occurred in any time step. To continue the simulation, a second critical time step is chosen for each component and added to the first. The program proceeds in this fashion, considering only time steps in which at least one failure has occurred. Thus computer time requirements become essentially independent of failure rates.