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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Sang Hun Lee, Hyun Gook Kang (RPI), Seung Jun Lee (UNIST), Sung Min Shin (KAERI), Eunchan Lee (Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 803-812
An issue on incorporating the software reliability within the NPP PRA model has been emerged in the licensing processes of digitalized NPPs. Since software failure induces CCFs of the processor modules, the reliability of the software used in NPP safety-critical I&C systems must be quantified and verified with proper test cases and environment. In order to prove the software to be error-free or have very low failure probability, an exhaustive testing of software is required. In this study, a software testing method based on the MCS-based exhaustive test case generation scheme combined with the simulation-based test-bed is proposed. The software test-bed was developed by emulating the microprocessor architecture of PLC used in NPP safety-critical applications and capturing its behavior at each machine instruction. For the test case generation, the software logic model was developed from the formal definition of FBD/LD and the sets of MCSs which represent the necessary and sufficient conditions for the software variables’ states to produce safety software output were generated. The MCSs were then converted into the test sets which are used as inputs to test-bed to verify that the test cases produce correct output after software execution. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with the safety-critical trip logic software of IDiPS-RPS, a fully digitalized reactor protection system. The method provides a systematic way to conduct software exhaustive testing while effectively reducing the software testing effort by emulating PLC behavior in machine-level compared to existing software testing methods.
