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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
Ian Cook, Stephen D. Unwin
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 94 | Number 2 | October 1986 | Pages 107-119
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE86-A27446
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As performed conventionally, nuclear probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) may be criticized as utilizing inscrutable and unjustifiably “precise” quantitative informed judgment or extrapolation from that judgment. To meet this criticism, controlling principles that govern the formulation of probability densities are proposed, given only the informed input that would be required for a simple bounding analysis. These principles are founded upon information theoretic ideas of maximum uncertainty and cover both cases in which there exists a stochastic model of the phenomenon of interest and cases in which these is no such model. In part, the principles are conventional, and such an approach is justified by appealing to certain analogies in accounting practice and judicial decision making. Examples are given. Appropriate employment of these principles is expected to facilitate substantial progress toward PRA scrutability and transparency.