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The human factor in licensing and operating the next generation of nuclear plants
As human factors specialists working at the intersection of human performance and nuclear operations, we are witnessing one of the nuclear sector’s most significant transitions in decades. The emergence of small modular reactors, microreactors, and other advanced designs is reshaping the industry’s landscape. Digital instrumentation and controls, passive safety systems, and increased automation are creating opportunities for greater safety margins and more flexible operation. These same features also fundamentally redefine what it means to “operate” a nuclear plant. Interactions among human roles, automation, and passive systems shape how people maintain awareness, exercise judgment, and intervene when necessary. These developments affect both operational realities and the regulatory foundations on which nuclear safety is built.
Douglas E. Peplow, Thomas M. Evans, John C. Wagner
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 785-792
MC Calculations | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-9
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo is quite useful for calculating specific quantities in complex transport problems. Many variance reduction strategies have been developed that accelerate Monte Carlo calculations for specific tallies. However, when trying to calculate multiple tallies or a mesh tally, users have had to accept different levels of relative uncertainty among the tallies or run separate calculations optimized for each individual tally. To address this limitation, an extension of the Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling (CADIS) method, which is used for difficult source/detector problems, has been developed to optimize several tallies or the cells of a mesh tally simultaneously. The basis for this method is the development of an importance function that represents the importance of particles to the objective of uniform Monte Carlo particle density in the desired tally regions. This method utilizes the results of a forward discrete ordinates solution, which may be based on a quick coarse-mesh calculation, to develop a forward-weighted source for the adjoint calculation. The importance map and the biased source computed from the adjoint flux are then used in the forward Monte Carlo calculation to obtain approximately uniform relative uncertainties for the desired tallies. This extension is called forward-weighted CADIS, or FW-CADIS.