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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.
N. Barbet, M. Dumas, G. Mihelich, Y. Souchet, J. B. Thomas
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 100 | Number 4 | December 1988 | Pages 435-439
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23576
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two expert systems for on-line analysis of nuclear reactor transients are reported. During a hypothetical crisis in a nuclear facility, a team of the Institute for Protection and Nuclear Safety must assess the risk to the local population. Expert systems are intended to assist in this analysis. The first deals with the availability of the safety systems of the plant (e.g., emergency core cooling system), depending on the functional state of the support systems. A second expert system will be built to study the physical transient of the reactor (mass and energy balance, pressure, flows). To do this, as in the development of other expert systems, a physical analyzer is required. This is the aim of SEXTANT, which combines several knowledge bases concerning measurements, models, and qualitative behavior of the plant with a conjecture-refutation mechanism and a set of simplified models of the current physical state. A prototype is being assessed with integral test facility transients. Both expert systems require powerful shells for their development. SPIRAL is such a tool for the development of expert systems for the computer-aided management of complex processes.