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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
August 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The human factor in licensing and operating the next generation of nuclear plants
As human factors specialists working at the intersection of human performance and nuclear operations, we are witnessing one of the nuclear sector’s most significant transitions in decades. The emergence of small modular reactors, microreactors, and other advanced designs is reshaping the industry’s landscape. Digital instrumentation and controls, passive safety systems, and increased automation are creating opportunities for greater safety margins and more flexible operation. These same features also fundamentally redefine what it means to “operate” a nuclear plant. Interactions among human roles, automation, and passive systems shape how people maintain awareness, exercise judgment, and intervene when necessary. These developments affect both operational realities and the regulatory foundations on which nuclear safety is built.
Miguel Ceceñas-Falcón, Robert M. Edwards
Nuclear Technology | Volume 131 | Number 1 | July 2000 | Pages 1-11
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3100
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new test platform for stability studies is presented that can be used to generate a power time series, which in turn may be used to validate the capability of boiling water reactor stability-monitoring algorithms. The thermal hydraulics for boiling channels are modeled and coupled with neutron kinetics to analyze the nonlinear dynamics of the closed-loop system. The model uses point kinetics to study core-wide oscillations, and it couples two time-domain calculations, for the fundamental and first harmonic modes, to study out-of-phase oscillations. The channel coolant flow dynamics is dominant in the power fluctuations observed by in-core nuclear instrumentation, and additive white noise is added to the solution for the channel flow in the thermal-hydraulic model to generate a noisy power time series. Autoregressive analysis performed with the computer-generated series agrees with the stability properties of the boiling channel. The operating conditions of the channel can be modified to accommodate a wide range of stability conditions.