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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Edoardo Cavalieri d'Oro, Michael W. Golay
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 1 | July 2012 | Pages 117-128
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Safeguards / Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14073
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Although in the United States and worldwide, the acceptance of nuclear systems has been abundantly regulated from a safety standpoint, the regulation of the nonproliferation performance of these systems still needs to be formalized. For nonproliferation, there are no regulations, formal license processes, or protocols to follow similar to the ones used by the nuclear sector to quantify and address safety risks. Consensus on how to address nonproliferation standards has not been achieved yet by regulators, designers, and policy makers, despite the urgent need to construct a clear framework to understand and formalize nonproliferation requirements of future and current nuclear systems.Appropriate tools and policies are needed to systematically quantify the standard of proliferation performance of nuclear energy systems, and to define the boundaries within which proliferation metrics can be considered acceptable.This paper tackles these issues by setting up a framework where risk, specifically the risk to covertly acquire special nuclear materials, can be used to evaluate the antiproliferation performance of nuclear systems. Specifically, it presents a treatment that, built upon analogy with the nuclear safety case, incorporates all the relevant features needed to set up a risk-informed licensing process for nuclear nonproliferation. The conceived framework can be used to assist the evaluation of the different solutions proposed internationally in order to strengthen the current nonproliferation regime.