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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Latest News
Hinkley Point C gets over $6 billion in financing from Apollo
U.S.-based private capital group Apollo Global has committed £4.5 billion ($6.13 billion) in financing to EDF Energy, primarily to support the U.K.’s Hinkley Point C station. The move addresses funding needs left unmet since China General Nuclear Power Corporation—which originally planned to pay for one-third of the project—exited in 2023 amid U.K. government efforts to reduce Chinese involvement.
Xingang Zhao, Xinyan Wang, Michael W. Golay
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 401-418
Technical Paper—Instrumentation and Controls | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2142445
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future advances in nuclear power technologies call for enhanced operator advice and autonomous control capabilities that can leverage simpler designs and increased safety features to reduce reliance on human labor. One of the first tasks in the development of such capabilities is the formulation of symptom-based conditional failure probabilities for the plant structures, systems, and components (SSCs) of interest. The primary goal is to aid plant personnel in (1) deducing the probabilistic performance status of the monitored SSCs and (2) detecting impending faults/failures. The task of estimating conditional failure probability is a bidirectional inference problem, and a logical approach is to use the Bayesian network (BN) method. As a knowledge-based explainable artificial intelligence tool and a probabilistic graphical model, BN offers reasoning capability under uncertainty, graphical representation emulating physical behavior of the target SSC, and interpretability of the model structure and results. This paper provides a systematic overview of the BN technique and the software tools for implementing BN models, along with the associated knowledge representation and reasoning paradigm. Both operational data and expert judgment can be readily incorporated into the knowledge base of a BN model. The challenges with data availability are highlighted, and the general approach to target SSC identification is presented. The focus is on failure-prone and risk-important balance of plant assets, especially for cases with strong operator involvement. Two example case studies on the failure of (1) a centrifugal pump and (2) an electric motor are conducted to demonstrate the usefulness and technical feasibility of the proposed BN-based fault diagnostic system using an expert system shell.