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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Latest News
Senate EPW Committee to hold Nieh nomination hearing
Nieh
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a nomination hearing Wednesday for Ho Nieh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as commission at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Trump nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029, as Nuclear NewsWire previously reported.
Nieh has been vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though since June 2024 he has been at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations as a loaned executive.
A return to the NRC: If confirmed by the Senate, Nieh would be returning to the NRC after three previous stints totaling nearly 20 years.
Fernando Ferrante, Stuart Lewis, Gareth Parry, Donald Dube, James Chapman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 3 | March 2021 | Pages 452-459
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1782693
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
While general guidance for addressing individual elements of the key principles of risk-informed decision making (RIDM) for large commercial nuclear power plants is available in the literature, the implementation of RIDM can still be challenging, whether a mature RIDM framework exists or not. Traditionally, RIDM approaches have focused strongly on the use of risk information, particularly quantitative results from probabilistic risk assessments, with some individual guidance on other key principles such as defense in depth and safety margin. Addressing these different principles in an integrated, balanced fashion that utilizes the strengths of each principle while understanding the impact of uncertainties is not as easily implemented. In fact, the evaluation of each principle in isolation can lead to inadequate input for decision-making purposes, while heavily relying on any single principle can negate the benefits from using a risk-informed approach. This technical note focuses on the specific challenges of the implementation of a truly integrated RIDM (IRIDM) framework and provides specific solutions and detailed discussions and examples. It discusses important clarifications of the key principles of RIDM and their intended implementation, as well as the interrelationships of the principles. A framework for IRIDM is presented that integrates the information that needs to be considered, documented, and communicated to decision makers.