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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Dumitru Serghiuta, John Tholammakkil
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1513-1528
Critical Review | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1570751
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper reviews the attributes and challenges of applying the functional failure concept and the use of Best-Estimate Plus Uncertainty methods in evaluating protective systems in the risk space. As an illustrative example, the paper uses the case of the effectiveness of CANada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor shutdown systems. A risk-informed formulation is first introduced for estimation of a reasonable limit for functional failure probability using the Swiss Cheese model. In the real application, there are several challenges in realistically estimating probabilities of exceeding a prescribed design or regulatory limit. Key challenges discussed in this critical review include the use of complex, computationally intensive predictive models; modeling completeness; assumptions about input distributions; validation; separation of uncertainties; and selection of statistical model and algorithms. The use of hybrid deterministic-probabilistic methods may address these challenges to a certain extent.