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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.
Zachary A. Spielman, Casey Kovesdi, Katya LeBlanc
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 305-312
Technical Paper—Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2105777
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Unlike renewables such as wind and photovoltaics, nuclear power is a carbon-free source of energy that offers reliable, dispatchable baseload energy. This unique characteristic makes nuclear energy an important component of the U.S. mix of carbon-free energy, and thus, a major contributor to achieving the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement. However, the current fleet of nuclear power plants are being outpriced by other energy sources, such as natural gas. One contributor to the high cost of nuclear is the outdated concept of operations. The current fleet of nuclear reactors employs the same concept of operations they started with over half a century ago. Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Human Factors Engineering (HFE) team under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program is engaged in helping the nuclear fleet modernize their control rooms. The goal is to transform nuclear power plant operators’ perceptions to improve efficient and safe plant operation. A major component to successfully transforming an aged control room with advanced technology is to use a design philosophy that guides the modernization effort. This paper discusses design philosophy and the role it plays. Also discussed is the initial approach to design philosophy and adherence to safety and regulatory requirements. Last, a brief discussion of how INL’s HFE team plans to implement a design philosophy that can be used industry wide.