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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Jean Baccou, Jinzhao Zhang, Philippe Fillion, Guillaume Damblin, Alessandro Petruzzi, Rafael Mendizábal, Francesc Reventos, Tomasz Skorek, Mathieu Couplet, Bertrand Iooss, Deog-Yeon Oh, Takeshi Takeda, Nils Sandberg
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 8 | August-September 2020 | Pages 721-736
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1759310
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uncertainty analysis is a key element in nuclear power plant deterministic safety analysis using best-estimate thermal-hydraulic codes and best-estimate-plus-uncertainty methodologies. If forward uncertainty propagation methods have now become mature for industrial applications, the input uncertainty quantification (IUQ) on the physical models still requires further investigations. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency PREMIUM project attempted to benchmark the available IUQ methods, but observed a strong user effect due to the lack of best practices guidance. The SAPIUM project has been proposed toward the construction of a clear and shared systematic approach for IUQ. The main outcome of the project is a first “good-practices” document that can be exploited for safety study in order to reach consensus among experts on recommended practices as well as to identify remaining open issues for further developments. This paper describes the systematic approach that consists of five elements in a step-by-step approach to perform a meaningful model IUQ and validation as well as some good-practice guideline recommendations for each step.