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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Ho Nieh nominated to the NRC
Nieh
President Trump recently nominated Ho Nieh for the role of commissioner in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029.
Nieh has been the vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though he is currently working as a loaned executive at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, where he has been for more than a year.
Nieh’s experience: Nieh started his career at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked primarily as a nuclear plant engineer and contributed as a civilian instructor in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Program.
From there, he joined the NRC in 1997 as a project engineer. In more than 19 years of service at the organization, he served in a variety of key leadership roles, including division director of Reactor Projects, division director of Inspection and Regional Support, and director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
Dongliang Zhang, Jia Shi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 5 | May 2025 | Pages 838-853
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2397256
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study explores the factors influencing the cognitive processes of operators in digital nuclear power plants, with a focus on the correlation between these factors and electroencephalogram (EEG) features. Initially, based on expert consultations, seven factors were considered: stress, time, fatigue, procedural complexity, user interface experience, procedural clarity, and efficiency. From these, four were identified as the most crucial for each stage of the cognitive process, highlighting their significant roles in influencing cognitive performance and potentially correlating with distinct EEG characteristics. These were assessed using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to determine the weightings of influences across the cognitive stages of monitoring, decision making, and execution.
Employing a simulated scenario of a steam generator tube rupture, subjective questionnaires were utilized to gauge participant perceptions of influencer impacts at each stage, calculating human factors fuzzy synthetic values. Concurrently, EEG signals were segmented by operational steps, extracting around 114 features across the time, frequency, and time-frequency domains, which were then dimensionally reduced to 17 principal components via adaptive principal components analysis (APCA). A correlation analysis was performed between the human factors fuzzy synthetic values and the APCA-reduced EEG features of participants. Subsequently, the EEG feature columns of the eight selected participants were used as inputs to construct a transformer-based self-attention network model to evaluate the participants’ human factors fuzzy comprehensive values.
The findings confirm the transformer model’s efficacy in assessing these values, evidencing a significant correlation between the EEG features and human factors fuzzy synthetic values. Integrating FAHP with machine learning methodologies, this model proficiently estimated operators’ cognitive states during various cognitive processes, significantly enhancing human-machine interface design and the operational safety and efficiency at nuclear power plants.
