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Division Spotlight
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.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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 Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Asad Ullah Amin Shah, Junyung Kim, Robby Christian, Hyun Gook Kang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 2818-2829
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2194460
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) accident is strengthening the station blackout (SBO) mitigation capabilities by enhancing defense in depth for all existing and new NPPs. One of the possible remedies is diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX). The objective of this study is to address the benefits of FLEX in various accident scenarios in terms of both risk and cost. FLEX was originally devised against SBO accidents. In this research, we investigate the fundamental plant responses against accidents considering two fundamentally different cases: accidents that lead to high pressure on the primary side and accidents that lead to low pressure on the primary side. Several uncertainties are associated with the characteristics of the FLEX portable equipment. Specifically, the time for FLEX deployment may depend on several factors such as type of accident, point of injection, availability of safety systems, battery backup timings, and human actions. This study utilizes a dynamic risk assessment framework to analyze accident scenarios and suggests a novel importance measure, which is a cumulative distribution function–based importance metric that characterizes the influence of input distribution on complete output distribution. The importance of the existing and newly developed FLEX strategy based on risk significance is illustrated with examples. The suggested measure provides clear insight into how FLEX affects risk of the whole system and additional risk margins thanks to new safety systems.