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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.
Erich A. Schneider, Charles G. Bathke, Michael R. James
Nuclear Technology | Volume 151 | Number 1 | July 2005 | Pages 35-50
Technical Paper | Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management - Core Physics and Fuel Management Methods, Analytical Tools, and Benchmarks | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-4
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
NFCSim is an event-driven, time-dependent simulation code modeling the flow of materials through the nuclear fuel cycle. NFCSim tracks mass flow at the level of discrete reactor fuel charges/discharges and logs the history of nuclear material as it progresses through a detailed series of processes and facilities, generating life-cycle material balances for any number of reactors. NFCSim is an ideal tool for analysis - of the economics, sustainability, or proliferation resistance - of nonequilibrium, interacting, or evolving reactor fleets. The software couples with a criticality and burnup engine, LACE (Los Alamos Criticality Engine). LACE implements a piecewise-linear, reactor-specific reactivity model for its criticality calculations. This model constructs fluence-dependent reactivity traces for any facility; it is designed to address nuclear economies in which either a steady state is never obtained or is a poor approximation. LACE operates in transient and equilibrium fuel management regimes at the refueling batch level, derives reactor- and cycle-dependent initial fuel compositions, and invokes ORIGEN2.x to carry out burnup calculations.