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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Elvan Sahin, Victor C. Leite, Kyung M. Kim, Nick Burns, Juliana Pacheco Duarte
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 2800-2817
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2151300
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fukushima Daiichi accident prompted the nuclear community to find a new solution to reduce the risk in nuclear power plants (NPPs) due to beyond-design-basis external events (BDBEEs). An implementation guide for diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX) has been presented by the Nuclear Energy Institute to manage the challenges of BDBEEs and enhance reactor safety. Due to the uniqueness of the FLEX systems, these systems can potentially carry dependencies among components not commonly modeled in NPPs. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness and applicability of both Bayesian networks (BNs) and discrete-time Bayesian networks in the reliability analysis of FLEX equipment. The study compares BNs with two other reliability assessment methods: fault tree and Markov chain. These methods are also shown to be capable of mapping into BNs to perform a reliability analysis of FLEX systems. A neutral dependency algorithm is used to simplify the conditional probability tables and reduce the complexity of the BNs. The results indicate that BNs are not only a powerful method for modeling FLEX strategies but are also effective techniques for inclusion of the dynamics of FLEX equipment in probabilistic risk analysis.