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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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
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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.”
Nguyen Thuy (EdF R&D)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 377-386
Complexity, safety relevance and long life time make nuclear power plants heavily dependent on information and skilled people. The knowledge accumulated during design, construction and operation is a critical asset that must be preserved for continuous improvement and future modifications. This paper proposes an approach that supports the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants based on cross-disciplinary methods and tools to create, maintain and exploit a structured knowledge basis for long-term operation, maintenance and up-grade. It proposes advanced modelling and justification methods to capture design information that currently often remains incompletely documented. In particular, it aims at making safety properties, dependencies and reasons behind design solutions understandable to all stakeholders. As a step towards its vision of model-based knowledge repositories, it extends traditional system descriptions with assumptions, operational constraints, design rationales and safety justifications. The knowledge base also links design solutions to requirements in regulations and standards. In addition, advanced plant models enable use of computer tools e.g. for automated dependency analysis and simulation. Focusing on design models for plant operation, the approach works in a multidisciplinary fashion and looks at reactor islands as socio-technical systems. Within the context of knowledge management and organizational learning, it integrates process and plant engineering, instrumentation and control system design and human factors engineering. On the basis of the current state-of-the-art and industrial needs, a common framework is defined. The general principles are refined towards more formal modelling languages and software tools. Finally, the framework and its implementations are tested in industrial case studies, and the experiences are used to refine the outputs of the project.