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What’s reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today?
Mark Reidmeyer
It is the convergence of urgency, innovation, and modernization that is reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today.
For decades, nuclear licensing operated in a relatively stable environment built around large light water reactors, predictable review cycles, and well-established regulatory pathways. Today, that model is evolving rapidly. Advanced reactors, AI-enabled tools, digital engineering platforms, grid reliability concerns, and aggressive decarbonization goals are all pushing the industry—and regulators—to move faster and think differently.
Donald E. Burton, Charles M. Snell, Jon B. Bryan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 26 | Number 1 | May 1975 | Pages 65-87
Technical Paper | Nuclear Explosive | doi.org/10.13182/NT75-A24405
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two-dimensional computer calculations were performed to model nuclear and high-explosive cratering detonations in saturated Bearpaw clay shale. Three calculations simulated 20-ton energy-yield nitromethane cratering experiments at burial depths of 6, 12.5, and 17 m. Results agreed with experimentally measured peak stresses, peak particle velocities, and crater dimensions. Calculations for a hypothetical nuclear source of the same energy at 12.5 m showed that only half as much kinetic energy was coupled into the mound; a correspondingly smaller crater was predicted. A 10-ton nitromethane source at 12.5 m was also calculated and was found to closely match the nuclear calculation. For these calculations, mound kinetic energy provided a valid criterion for achieving cratering similitude between high-explosive and nuclear events. In this case, similitude was obtained with a nitromethane source having about half the energy of the nuclear source.