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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.
I. Hasemann, J. A. Jones, J. Van Der Steen, E. Van Wonderen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 113 | Number 3 | March 1996 | Pages 291-303
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35209
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Commission of the European Communities and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD have organized an international exercise to compare the predictions of accident consequence assessment codes, and to identify those features of the models which lead to differences in the predicted results. Alongside this, a further exercise was undertaken in which the COSYMA code was used independently by several different organizations. Some of the findings of the COSYMA users’ exercise are described that have general applications to accident consequence assessments. A number of areas are identified in which further work on accident consequence models may be justified. These areas, which are also of interest for codes other than COSYMA, are (a) the calculation and averaging of doses and risks to people sheltered in different types of buildings, particularly with respect to the evaluation of early health effects; (b) the modeling of long-duration releases and their description as a series of shorter releases; (c) meteorological sampling for results at a certain location, specifically for use with trajectory models of atmospheric dispersion; and (d) aspects of calculating probabilities of consequences at a point.