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Latest News
Second round of Launch Pad selections includes eight newcomers
The National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory has announced 13 project selections across 12 companies for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, a Department of Energy–led program that integrates reactor and fuel facility authorization, testing, and deployment support for private nuclear developers.
The Launch Pad emerged from the Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program.
According to INL, projects selected include reactor development and nuclear fuel cycle advancements, including fabrication, enrichment, and conversion technologies.
Elvan Sahin, Victor C. Leite, Kyung M. Kim, Nick Burns, Juliana Pacheco Duarte
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 2800-2817
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2151300
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fukushima Daiichi accident prompted the nuclear community to find a new solution to reduce the risk in nuclear power plants (NPPs) due to beyond-design-basis external events (BDBEEs). An implementation guide for diverse and flexible coping strategies (FLEX) has been presented by the Nuclear Energy Institute to manage the challenges of BDBEEs and enhance reactor safety. Due to the uniqueness of the FLEX systems, these systems can potentially carry dependencies among components not commonly modeled in NPPs. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness and applicability of both Bayesian networks (BNs) and discrete-time Bayesian networks in the reliability analysis of FLEX equipment. The study compares BNs with two other reliability assessment methods: fault tree and Markov chain. These methods are also shown to be capable of mapping into BNs to perform a reliability analysis of FLEX systems. A neutral dependency algorithm is used to simplify the conditional probability tables and reduce the complexity of the BNs. The results indicate that BNs are not only a powerful method for modeling FLEX strategies but are also effective techniques for inclusion of the dynamics of FLEX equipment in probabilistic risk analysis.