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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Charles Weaver, John Gwynne, Mark F. St. John
Nuclear Technology | Volume 202 | Number 2 | May-June 2018 | Pages 230-236
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1448672
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Human operators of advanced technology systems, such as nuclear power, command and control, and deepwater oil drilling, must be able to evaluate and respond to a wide array of operational anomalies. Unfortunately, these circumstances are often complex and ambiguous, complicating decision-making tasks. One common decision-making error, called confirmation bias, occurs when decision makers prematurely focus on one explanation instead of systematically considering all plausible alternative explanations that could equally well account for an operational anomaly.
The Delphi display is designed to counteract decision makers’ tendencies toward confirmation bias and to encourage them to consider all plausible explanations, including high-risk explanations they might otherwise overlook. An initial Delphi display prototype was designed to help identify the underlying cause of operational anomalies in the complex, high-consequence technology of deepwater drilling. This prototype decision aid incorporates major indicators related to operational anomalies and presents corresponding plausible explanations for a given combination of indicators, ranging from high-risk system-critical explanations to lower-risk but still significant events. The Delphi display incorporates several innovative features to help decision makers detect and monitor operational anomalies and view the relationships among indicators and their associated plausible explanations.
Preliminary evaluations of an early prototype Delphi display for detecting kicks in deepwater oil drilling operations have been promising. Moreover, the methodology used to design and develop the Delphi display can be readily generalized to numerous other operational contexts that require humans to make system-critical decisions. To illustrate, an initial Delphi display design for nuclear power plant control is described.