ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
Standards Program
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
Gwang Seop Son, Dong Hoon Kim, Choul Woong Son, Joon Kyo Kim, Jae Hyun Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 3 | December 2013 | Pages 297-309
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A24987
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the architecture of the Safety Programmable Logic Controller (SPLC) for advanced nuclear safety systems and describes the evaluation and analyses of reliability for the SPLC using the Markov model. The SPLC is designed to have structural flexibility for users to select module redundancy according to the requirements of specific applications. To be used for the nuclear safety system, the SPLC is configured for multiple modular redundancy composed of dual modular redundancy and triple modular redundancy. Markov models were developed for three types of existing safety-grade Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) architectures and the SPLC, and the reliabilities of the architectures were then evaluated and analyzed using the models. The results show that the reliability of SPLC is up to 1.6 times better than those of the three PLC architectures, and the mean time to failure (MTTF) of the SPLC is up to 22 000 h better than those of the three. From the reliability analyses, the failure rate of each module in the SPLC should be <2 × 10-4 /h, and the MTTF average increase rate depending on the fault coverage factor (FCF) increment, i.e., MTFF/FCF, is 4 months/0.1.