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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Marvin Dainoff, Lawrence Hettinger, Lewis Hanes, Jeffrey Joe
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 295-304
Technical Paper—Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2138065
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The modernization of nuclear power plants will require an advanced concept of operations, involving an integrated set of tightly coupled systems in which all stakeholders act in a coordinated manner. For this modernization effort to be enabled, we developed a human and organizational factors approach based on a broad sociotechnical framework. Starting from core human factors principles, we conducted a literature review of the methods and approaches relevant to the modernization problem. These included not only core disciplines such as cognitive systems engineering, systems theoretic accident modeling and processes, human systems integration, resilience engineering, and macroergonomics but also related topics of safety culture and organizational change. From this literature, we developed a conceptual framework centered around the work system with its four interacting components: people, technology, process, and governance. In an effective work system, these four components are jointly optimized according to three systems criteria: efficiency, effectiveness, and safety. System failure may result from excessive emphasis on any one criterion. The actual work of attaining joint optimization in a given work system can be accomplished by utilizing three high-level functions: knowledge elicitation, knowledge representation, and cross-functional integration. We illustrated the utility of this approach by applying it to practical problems and case studies.