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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.
Grégory Perret, Damar Wicaksono, Ivor D. Clifford, Hakim Ferroukhi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1638-1651
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1591154
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper illustrates the capability of a global sensitivity analysis (GSA) framework applied to the TRACE thermal-hydraulics (TH) system code in the context of selected flooding experiments with blocked arrays reflood experiments. The proposed GSA framework deals with functional outputs (temperature profiles) and aims at quantifying the sensitivity of a specific feature of the reflood curve (its amplitude) to the physical parameters of TRACE. The framework uses a registration strategy based on the Square Root Slope Function (SRSF) transform to separate the amplitude and phase of the temperature profile. The registration is followed by a dimension reduction on principal component basis and the estimation of Sobol’ sensitivity indices. This paper compares the SRSF registration to the more traditional landmark registration and shows its excellent properties. Given the simple nature of the reflood curve, the Sobol’ indices obtained on the amplitude of the reflood curve also compare well with those obtained on the scalar maximum temperature of the curve. This suggests the framework to be of interest for deriving the sensitivity of the amplitude of more complex TH transients to the physical parameters of the code.