ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
Canada’s General Fusion to become publicly traded company
General Fusion has entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. (SVAC) that would make General Fusion the first publicly traded pure-play fusion firm, the company announced on January 22. The business combination is projected to be completed in mid-2026.
Andrej Prosek, Borut Mavko
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 1 | April 2007 | Pages 69-79
Technical Note | Best Estimate Methods | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The approval of the revised rule on the acceptance of emergency core cooling system performance in 1988 triggered a significant interest in the development of codes and methodologies for uncertainty evaluation of best-estimate loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) analyses. The code scaling, applicability, and uncertainty evaluation method was developed and demonstrated for a large-break LOCA in a pressurized water reactor. Later, several new best-estimate plus uncertainty methods (BEPUs) were developed around the world. The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare the statistical approaches of BEPU methods and present their importance for licensing applications in nuclear power plants. The study showed that the uncertainty analysis with random sampling of input parameters, using the nonparametric statistical tolerance limits for estimating uncertainty of output parameters, is the commonly accepted approach today. The existing BEPU methods seem mature enough, while the future research may be focused on the codes with internal assessment of uncertainty.