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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
François Sagot, Didier van Houtte, Katsumi Okayama, Joel Hourtoule, Inho Song
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 134-138
ITER Systems | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As the next step in the development of fusion energy, ITER has to be safe, reliable and available whenever needed to produce the experimental data as defined by the scientific program. To ensure the success of this mission, a Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Inspectability (RAMI) analysis is being performed on the ITER plant systems to optimize the design and prepare both operation and maintenance over the ITER life. This analysis relies on a functional breakdown translated to Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs) and on a Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) to provide reliability and availability calculations, to highlight the technical risks and to prioritize the ways to mitigate them in order to maximize the availability of the machine for plasma operation. Standardization is one way of addressing this concern in a cost-effective manner, as reducing the diversity of components allows keeping a reduced stock of interchangeable spares available on short notice and reducing the time to repair after a failure.This paper will present this approach as it is applied on the ITER power supplies systems: the Coil Power Supply and Distribution System (CPSDS) and the Steady-State Electrical Network (SSEN).