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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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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Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
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.