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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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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.
Dai Xinyu, Yang Ming, Wang Jipu, Li Wei, Xu Zhihui
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 730-744
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2155023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Human error is still one of the main factors threatening the safe operation of nuclear power plants. In view of the deviation of operators’ actions from operating procedures and the impact of implementation of operating procedures on safety functions, this paper proposes the Operating Procedures Supervision System (OPSS). The OPSS monitors operators’ performance deviating from operating procedures, determines the operation state of a nuclear power plant according to realization of the three key safety functions of the plant (reactivity control, radioactivity containment, and residual heat removal), and evaluates the impact of the implementation of operating procedures on the safety state. Although the OPSS supports both off-line and online applications, this paper presents only an example of off-line evaluation to illustrate the method. On this basis, the paper proposes a risk matrix to comprehensively weigh operator action deviation and the impact of operator actions on plant safety functions, which can more finely perceive the changes of system safety status and of operator performance.