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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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.
Lee T. Maccarone, Daniel G. Cole (Univ of Pittsburgh), Nageswara S.V. Rao, Alexander M. Melin, Sacit M. Cetiner (ORNL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 411-421
Cyber-physical systems consist of interconnected physical processes and computational re- sources. Because the cyber and physical worlds are integrated, vulnerabilities in both the cyber and physical domains can result in damage to the physical system. As cyber-physical systems, nuclear power plants must be secure in both domains in order to maintain operational safety. Nuclear power plants may be targeted by a variety of threat actors such as state actors, hack- tivists, and disgruntled employees|each with a unique motivation and set of resources. This work predicts the outcome of a cyber-physical attack on a nuclear power plant by examining the interaction between a threat actor and a plant defender. A game-theoretic approach is presented to analyze attacks on cyber-physical systems. The cyber-physical attack is analyzed as a two-player strategic-form game. The two players are an attacker and a defender: the defender attempts to maintain plant operation while the attacker attempts to disrupt it. The attacker's strategy set consists of a cyber attack, physical attack, cyber-physical attack, and abstaining from an attack. The defender's strategy set consists of a cyber reinforcement, physical reinforcement, cyber-physical reinforcement, and abstaining from reinforcement. Each player incurs a cost from either attacking or defending. If an attack is successful, the attacker incurs a gain and the defender incurs a loss. A mixed strategy Nash equilibrium is identi ed. Under the mixed Nash equilibrium conditions, the expected utility of the attacker is zero, and the expected utility of the defender is the cost of cyber-physical reinforcement.