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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
Jiuwu Hui
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 8 | August 2025 | Pages 1699-1722
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2426410
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accurate estimation of unmeasured system states and disturbances in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) is essential for effective control, operation optimization, and safety monitoring. To this end, this paper investigates the estimation of unmeasured system states and disturbances of the PWR system during load-following operation. First, a mathematical model for the PWR system is established based on the two-point kinetics equations with one equivalent delayed neutron precursor group. Subsequently, an extended state observer (ESO) integration scheme, incorporating two coupled ESOs, is constructed to estimate unmeasured system states, including relative density of delayed neutron precursor, average fuel temperature, total reactivity, xenon concentration, and iodine concentration, along with time-varying disturbances, with the use of measurements of the PWR system only. According to the Lyapunov stability theorem, it is proved that the estimation error dynamic of the proposed ESO integration scheme is uniformly ultimately bounded stable. Finally, simulation results confirm that the proposed ESO integration scheme provides higher estimation accuracy and stronger robustness against measurement noises, model uncertainties, and external disturbances compared to both a high-gain observer and a high-order sliding mode observer.