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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.
Zhiyao Liu, Qichao Zhao, Liming Zhang, Xuegang Zhang, Jieyun Fan, Qingju Wang, Ping Wu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 4 | April 2021 | Pages 575-581
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1784683
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The safety of the main control room in a nuclear power plant is an important research topic with practical implications. In this study, we used virtual reality technology and multimodal data to investigate the effect of experience on operators’ responses under emergency conditions. We asked participants to perform a series of tasks in a virtual fire emergency environment while simultaneously recording their behavioral, eye-tracking, and physiological data. The results showed a significant effect of experience on participants’ behavioral performance, total fixation time, and skin electrical response. Participants from a high-experience group showed a longer total fixation duration and lower skin conductance level compared to those from a low-experience group. This suggested that experience could have an impact on operators’ visual information extraction and mental stress under emergency situations in an NPP. Our study also provides a reference method for using virtual experimental settings and objective measurements for future human factor research in the main control room of an NPP.