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Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
Yi-Cheng Tian, Min Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 12 | December 2021 | Pages 1913-1933
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1843955
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The security of nuclear power plants becomes an ever more important issue after the tragedy of the World Trade Center of New York City on September 11, 2000. Utilities around the world have significantly increased the resources used to enhance the security of nuclear power plants. In this study, a mathematical model based on Monte Carlo simulations is developed to calculate the probability of invaders being located in a building in the vital area, on a floor of the building, and in a region of the floor when invaders break into the vital area successfully.
In the model, it is assumed that invaders have no specific target to sabotage and they have no prior knowledge of the layout of the plant. Invaders are running around randomly in the vital area, and Monte Carlo simulations are used to trace their paths on a floor. The results can help the security of a nuclear power plant locate invaders in the vital area.
If it is assumed that the damage caused by the invaders is similar to the damage induced by a fire, the product of the probability of invaders being located in a region and the fire conditional core damage probability of the region ijk (CCDPF,ijk) from a fire hazard probabilistic safety assessment can be used to prioritize the importance of the region to the risk of terrorist sabotage and to allocate resources that enhance physical protection. The summation of the product for all the region is the conditional core damage probability of terrorist attack (CCDPS).
The surrogate plant used in the present study is a typical General Electric–designed Boiling Water Reactor-6 with Mark III containment. The vital area in this study has six entrances and three buildings: turbine, control, and auxiliary. Among the 196 regions considered in the analysis, the majority (between 85% and 92% for different entrances) have the Pijk of locating terrorist probability of less than 10−2. The top three average Pijk regions are located in the turbine building. The eight regions with CCDPF,ijk equal to 1.0 of the plant contribute 86.8% of the total average CCDPS. Region AUX56, which is the corridor on the third floor of the auxiliary building, contributes 33.9% of the risk of core damage. Region AUX14, which is the corridor on the first floor of the auxiliary building, contributes 17.1% of this risk.
