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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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February 2024
Latest News
Why should safeguards by design be a global effort?
Jeremy Whitlock
I can’t think of a more exciting time to be working in nuclear, with the diversity of advanced reactor development and increasing global support for nuclear in sustainable energy planning. But we can’t lose sight of the need to plan for efficient international safeguards at the same time.
Global nuclear deployment has been underpinned since 1970 by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), making it a key customer requirement for governments to demonstrate unequivocally that the technology is not being misused for weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped verify this commitment for more than 50 years, but it has never safeguarded many of the advanced reactors (and related fuel cycle processes) being developed today.
Jinkai Wang, Modi Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 3 | September 2018 | Pages 221-231
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1448671
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Many countries have paid more attention to seismic risk in nuclear power plants recently. Recent U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission actions have increased the expectation that major efforts will be required to expand plant Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) models to include seismic events. PRA is a powerful tool to identify the seismic vulnerabilities in a nuclear power plant. This study introduces a method to quantify seismic risk in a nuclear power plant. A special seismic risk quantification tool was developed to perform uncertainty simulation for seismic occurrence frequencies and failure events probabilities in this work. Compared with some other software, some significant improvements were made in simulation scope and data processing method. This study took a nuclear power plant under construction in China as an example. The seismic vulnerabilities were identified and the risk insights were proposed to further reduce the risk. In order to optimize the plant design, a risk-informed seismic PRA was applied in the design for the first time. An optimization strategy is proposed to make the plant more cost effective and competitive in the market. This study provides a very useful guidance for plant design optimization in the future.