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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.
Alex Galperin, Kurt Hofer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 1 | October 1994 | Pages 1-12
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35038
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Performing complicated engineering analyses of a nuclear power plant requires storage and manipulation of a large amount of information, both data and knowledge. This information is characterized by its multidisciplinary nature, complexity, and diversity. The problems caused by inefficient and lengthy manual operations involving the data flow management within the framework of the safety-related analysis of a power plant can be solved by applying the computer aided engineering principles. These principles are the basis of the design of an integrated information storage system (IRIS). The basic idea is to create a computerized environment, which includes both database and functional capabilities. Consideration and analysis of the data types and required data manipulation capabilities as well as operational requirements, resulted in the choice of an object-oriented database management system (OODBMS) as a development platform for solving the software engineering problems. Several advantages of OODBMSs over conventional relations database systems were found of crucial importance, especially providing the necessary flexibility for different data types and extensibility potential. A detailed design of a data model is produced for the plant technical data and for the storage of analysis results. The overall system architecture was designed to assure the feasibility of integrating database capabilities with procedures and functions written in conventional algorithmic programming languages.