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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
August 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Peiwei Sun, Ji Feng, Xianbao Yuan, Liang Zhao, Furong Liu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 1 | July 2017 | Pages 35-46
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1322396
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Canadian SuperCritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR) is a once-through pressure tube–type SCWR under development in Canada. It is a multivariable system with strong cross coupling and a high degree of nonlinearity. The outputs are sensitive to disturbances, and the variations in the thermal parameters should be limited to avoid thermal stress to its components. Therefore, designing an adequate control system is challenging. In this paper, robust multivariable feedback control and feedforward control are proposed to design the control system of the Canadian SCWR. Three uncertainty sources are considered: unmodeled uncertainty, linearization uncertainty, and model reduction uncertainty. These uncertainties are evaluated taking into account all aspects affecting the linear dynamic model used in the robust controller synthesis, and the uncertainty bounds are determined to cover the uncertainties. The robust feedback controller is synthesized using the μ-synthesis approach. The feedforward control is added to the robust feedback control to further improve the control performance. It is obtained through disturbance compensation features for a feedforward controller. The control performance of the hybrid control system is evaluated based on the nonlinear simulation by introducing different setpoint changes. The designed control system can stabilize the Canadian SCWR, and the control performance is satisfactory.