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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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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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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.”
Jari Laarni (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1620-1630
People are prone to use various kinds of cognitive heuristics to simplify decision making especially in demanding situations. Sometimes, these heuristics expose them to failures in judgement, which may lead to errors. Even though these kind of failures are also possible in process industries, there is little research on the effect of cognitive biases on process control and maintenance work. In the present paper, we provide suggestions of how heuristics and biases may appear in these tasks in nuclear domain. Overall, our observations suggest that operative and maintenance personnel may be prone to commit biases also in nuclear domain. We have reviewed existing literature on the effect of cognitive biases in NPP incidents and accidents, and we describe some of the most well-known biases and give examples of their application for decision making in nuclear domain. We have also analyzed failures and problem situations in a simulator study conducted in a Finnish NPP. A small set of failures of judgement could be identified in which some forms of cognitive biases may have manifested themselves. The present paper is one of the first systematic reviews on effects of cognitive heuristics and biases among operative and maintenance personnel in NPPs and ways to prevent them. Our next step would be to analyze more systematically a set of cognitive errors specific to operative and maintenance activities in nuclear domain in order to identify occurrences of cognitive biases and illusions in them.