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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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U.K.’s NWS gets input from young people on geological disposal
Nuclear Waste Services, the radioactive waste management subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has reported on its inaugural year of the National Youth Forum on Geological Disposal forum. NWS set up the initiative, in partnership with the environmental consultancy firm ARUP and the not-for-profit organization The Young Foundation, to give young people the chance to share their views on the government’s plans to develop a geological disposal facility (GDF) for the safe, secure, and long-term disposal of radioactive waste.
Ronald L. Boring, Thomas A. Ulrich, Torrey J. Mortenson (INL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1210-1221
This paper provides a concise discussion of levels of automation that may be applied in the design of the control and information systems of control rooms at advanced reactors. The paper highlights that there are two types of automation?control automation for actions performed at the plant and information automation for synthesizing key plant parameters for use by reactor operators. This paper reviews current automation implementations at current nuclear power plants and considers opportunities for enhanced automation in newer plants. While automation may bring clear benefits such as reduced staffing levels, poorly introduced automation can actually have adverse effects on operator performance by relegating operators to tasks at which they perform poorly. This paper concludes with a discussion of considerations for automation relative to primary vs. secondary side control and monitoring.