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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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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Webinar: MC&A and safety in advanced reactors in focus
Towell
Russell
Prasad
The American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division recently hosted a webinar on updating material control and accounting (MC&A) and security regulations for the evolving field of advanced reactors.
Moderator Shikha Prasad (CEO, Srijan LLC) was joined by two presenters, John Russell and Lester Towell, who looked at how regulations that were historically developed for traditional light water reactors will apply to the next generation of nuclear technology and what changes need to be made.
Yu-Chih Ko, Ching-Hui Wu, Min Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 1 | July 2006 | Pages 22-33
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3743
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) uses a systematic approach to estimate the reliability and risk of a nuclear power plant (NPP). Over the past few years, severe accident management guidance (SAMG), which delineates the mitigation actions of core melt accidents of an NPP, has been developed to support operators and staff in the technical support center in dealing with those misfortunes. It can be expected that the implementation of SAMG will lower the containment failure frequency and reduce the amount of radionuclides released to the environment during the accident. The plant studied is the Maanshan NPP of Taiwan Power Company, which employs a Westinghouse-designed three-loop pressurized water reactor (PWR) with large dry containment.The containment system event trees and containment phenomenological event trees of the Level-2 PSA model are modified to incorporate the new mitigation actions specified in SAMG. The HCR (Human Cognitive Reliability) and THERP (Technique for Human Error Rate Prediction) models are used to quantify the human error probability (HEP) of all the actions in the Level-2 PSA model. The MAAP4 (Module Accident Analysis Program version 4) code is used to perform thermohydraulic calculations to determine the demand time required in the HEP analysis.The results show that the frequency of most of the source term categories is reduced except the one in which both the reactor pressure vessel and containment are intact. The containment failure frequency is reduced by 14.8% after the implementation of SAMG. The frequency of containment early failure is reduced by 16.2%. Most of the reduction in the containment early failure frequency comes from the reduction in the induced steam generator tube rupture (STGR). The frequency of induced SGTR was reduced from 2.3 × 10-7/reactoryr to 1.0 × 10-8/reactoryr.