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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Optimizing nuclear plant outages: Data analytics tools and methods for enhancing resilience and efficiency
Nuclear power plant refueling outages are among the most complex phases in a plant’s operational cycle.1 During these outages, tens of thousands of activities, including maintenance and surveillance, are conducted simultaneously within a short timeframe. Typically lasting three to four weeks, these operations involve large crews of contractors with diverse skill sets performing tasks ranging from testing and surveillance to maintenance. Outages may extend longer if major backfitting or modernization projects are planned. Consequently, plant outages are expensive, incurring significant operational costs, such as contractor labor and equipment, as well as the loss of generation while the plant is off line. This can easily cost a plant operator more than $1 million a day. Therefore, there is a constant need to mitigate the economic impact on plants by reducing the frequency, duration, and risks associated with these outages.2,3
T.J. McCarville, C.F. Carson, B.B. Glasgow, W.R. Meier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1565-1570
Fusion Economic | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24955
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A system model for scaling the cost and performance of ICF point designs to different operating conditions has been developed. The model allows changes in various figures of merit to be examined as a function of selected operating conditions. As a result, S/kWe can be optimized as a function of net electric output. A detailed description of the algorithms1 and users guide2 can be obtained through LLNL. This report provides an overview of the philosophy that motivated the performance and cost models, and illustrates the model results with an example.
