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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Anna Hall, Ronald L. Boring, Tina M. Miyake
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 261-275
Critical Review—Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2073951
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plant (NPP) control room operators must make ongoing computations and decisions that maximize production and ensure safety, which places a high cognitive burden on the operators. How cognitions such as attention, visuospatial ability, and working memory interact with socio-technical systems to achieve optimal operations is well studied. However, there is an absence of research that examines how cognitive functioning within the NPP control room environment is moderated by developmental aging processes. This is of critical importance because different types of cognitive actions are known to develop and peak at different times across the adult life span, and it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no age at which all cognitive faculties operate at maximum capacity. Thus, given that NPPs are experiencing an aging workforce, it is vital to identify how mission-critical cognitions change with age. This paper reviews implications of aging on reactor operators in the current and new fleet. We highlight lessons that can be learned from state-of-the-art human factors research that considers aging, lessons from the large cognitive aging literature, and lessons from aging workers in other industries that use sophisticated socio-technical systems, such as aviation. We also consider the important subject of aging effects versus expertise and present preliminary data that support the premise that age of operator is linked to effective and efficient operations but that this relationship may be moderated by level of operations expertise. Finally, we apply these lessons to future considerations for aging research in current nuclear operations and with the advent of advanced modernized control rooms.