ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
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.