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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Latest News
Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
William S. Grenzebach, Carolyn D. Heising, Thomas J. Marx
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 3 | December 1994 | Pages 421-433
Technical Paper | Reactor Operation | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35024
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In today’s operating environment of nuclear power plants, setpoints are established for key plant parameters, such as temperature, pressure, and flow rate. Reducing excursions beyond these setpoints would save millions of dollars as a result of improved plant availability and improve plant safety as well. The statistical method of maximum likelihood factor analysis is presented, and the results of two computer runs are given. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that it is possible to consistently rank order the eleven tracked variables of the reactor coolant system. Implementation of the maximum likelihood factor method would permit the decision maker to predict unanticipated transients and reduce plant unavailability.
