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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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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Latest News
Vogtle-3 shuts down for valve issue
One of the new Vogtle units in Georgia was shut down unexpectedly on Monday last week for a valve issue that has since been investigated and repaired. According to multiple local news outlets, Georgia Power reported on July 17 that Unit 3 was back in service.
Southern Company spokesperson Jacob Hawkins confirmed that Vogtle-3 went off line at 9:25 p.m. local time on July 8 “due to lowering water levels in the steam generators caused by a valve issue on one of the three main feedwater pumps.”
Luciano Burgazzi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 2 | November 2003 | Pages 145-151
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT144-145
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology, to quantify the reliability of passive safety systems, proposed for use in advanced reactor design, is developed. Passive systems are identified as systems that do not need any external input or energy to operate and rely only upon natural physical laws (e.g., gravity, natural circulation, heat conduction, internally stored energy, etc.) and/or intelligent use of the energy inherently available in the system (e.g., chemical reaction, decay heat, etc.). The reliability of a passive system refers to the ability of the system to carry out the required function under the prevailing condition when required: The passive system may fail its mission, in addition to the classical mechanical failure of its components, for deviation from the expected behavior, due to physical phenomena or to different boundary and initial conditions. The present research activity is finalized at the reliability estimation of passive B systems (i.e., implementing moving working fluids, see IAEA); the selected system is a loop operating in natural circulation including a heat source and a heat sink.The functional reliability concept, defined as the probability to perform the required mission, is introduced, and the R-S (Resistance-Stress) model taken from fracture mechanics is adopted. R and S are coined as expressions of functional Requirement and system State. Water mass flow circulating through the system is accounted as a parameter defining the passive system performance, and probability distribution functions (pdf's) are assigned to both R and S quantities; thus, the mission of the passive system defines which parameter values are considered a failure by comparing the corresponding pdfs according to a defined safety criteria. The methodology, its application, and results of the analysis are presented and discussed.