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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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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
Yoshiaki Kazawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1583-1589
Fusion Economic | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24958
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The author proposes and defines “the figure of merit of fusion reactor” F which can indicate the economics of fusion reactor comparatively simply and easily by using every important evaluation factor. An attempt to express it synthetically in a numerical formula as to magnetic confined fusion reactor is made. By means of this evaluation formula F, some evaluation studies are carried out for each type of conceptually designed commercial reactors whose design data have been reported. The result is that Heliotron is the best, Tokamak the second, and Tandem Mirror the third.
