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Division Spotlight
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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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.
Sunil D. Weerakkody
Nuclear Technology | Volume 186 | Number 2 | May 2014 | Pages 139-144
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-39
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Until the late 1990s, inspection and enforcement practices at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) were minimally influenced by probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) results. In the late 1990s, the NRC noted various shortcomings of the licensee assessment process [commonly known as the systematic assessment of licensee performance (SALP)] established in 1980. For example, the SALP process was found to lack focus on the most safety important issues and was subjective. The resulting new reactor oversight process is a risk-informed performance-based framework that uses PRA insights. Consequently, the NRC set up a significance determination process (SDP) that would rely on the risk significance of performance deficiencies of the licensees. The SDP assesses contributions from both internal events and external events using the best available information. Over the last two to three decades, the NRC has completed the development of high-quality PRA models that are capable of assessing risks due to internal events. Several recent regulatory actions, some of which were prompted by the events at Fukushima, have provided the impetus for the NRC and the licensees to enhance the methods and information related to assessing risks associated with external events such as earthquakes and floods. This paper describes the current status on how the NRC staff uses the best available information to assess risk associated with external events and notes a plethora of regulatory actions that may provide inertia for the development of high-quality models for external events. The paper then points to past trends on how the regulatory actions in the fire PRA area contributed to significant advancements in fire PRA technology and points to tangible evidence on how the same trend has begun in the area of seismic- and flood-related risk assessments.