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The human factor in licensing and operating the next generation of nuclear plants
As human factors specialists working at the intersection of human performance and nuclear operations, we are witnessing one of the nuclear sector’s most significant transitions in decades. The emergence of small modular reactors, microreactors, and other advanced designs is reshaping the industry’s landscape. Digital instrumentation and controls, passive safety systems, and increased automation are creating opportunities for greater safety margins and more flexible operation. These same features also fundamentally redefine what it means to “operate” a nuclear plant. Interactions among human roles, automation, and passive systems shape how people maintain awareness, exercise judgment, and intervene when necessary. These developments affect both operational realities and the regulatory foundations on which nuclear safety is built.
Dan Gabriel Cacuci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 6 | June 2019 | Pages 555-600
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1553910
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work presents an application of the Second-Order Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (2nd-ASAM) to the neutron transport Boltzmann equation that models a multiplying subcritical system comprising a nonfission neutron source to compute efficiently and exactly all of the first- and second-order functional derivatives (sensitivities) of a detector’s response to all of the model’s parameters, including isotopic number densities, microscopic cross sections, fission spectrum, sources, and detector response function. As indicated by the general theoretical considerations underlying the 2nd-ASAM, the number of computations required to obtain the first and second orders increases linearly in augmented Hilbert spaces as opposed to increasing exponentially in the original Hilbert space. The results presented in this work are currently being implemented in several production-oriented three-dimensional neutron transport code systems for analyzing specific subcritical systems.