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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.
A. Labarile, C. Mesado, R. Miró, G. Verdú
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1675-1684
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1631051
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the challenges of studying the neutronics of reactors is to generate reliable parameterized libraries that contain information to simulate the core in all possible operational and transient conditions. These libraries must include tables of cross sections and other neutronic and kinetic parameters and are obtained by simulating all the segments in a transport code. At the lattice level, one can use branch calculations to change “instantaneously” the feedback parameters as a function of burnup. When using random sampling for the lattice calculations, one can obtain statistical information about the output parameters and use it in a core simulation to characterize the accuracy of data estimating uncertainties when simulating a heterogeneous system at different scales of detail.
This work presents the methodology to generate NEMTAB libraries from data obtained in the SCALE code system to be used in PARCS simulations. The code TXT2NTAB is used to reorder the cross-section tables in NEMTAB format and generate another NEMTAB of standard deviation. With these libraries, the authors perform a steady-state calculation for a light water reactor to propagate several uncertainties at the core level. The methodology allows obtaining statistical information of the most important output parameters: multiplication factor keff, axial power peak Pz, and axial peak node Nz.