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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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New coolants, new fuels: A new generation of university reactors
Here’s an easy way to make aging U.S. power reactors look relatively youthful: Compare them (average age: 43) with the nation’s university research reactors. The 25 operating today have been licensed for an average of about 58 years.
G. Apostolakis, T. L. Chu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 50 | Number 1 | August 1980 | Pages 5-15
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A17065
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reliability analysis of the engineered safety systems of nuclear power plants requires the calculation of the pointwise and average unavailabilities of redundant systems under periodic test and maintenance. The complexity of the calculations usually requires simulation for realistic results. However, simple analytical expressions showing the significant contributions to the unavailability provide insights concerning the relative importance of the potential failure modes of the systems, such as hardware failures, demand-type failures, human errors, and various types of dependent (common cause) failures. These expressions can be used for a quick calculation of the unavailability as well as the propagation of uncertainties by analytical methods, e.g., the method of moments.