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NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Shannon Eggers, Andreas Enqvist (Univ of Florida)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1105-1114
The modernization of industrial control systems (ICS) in critical infrastructures has created new vulnerabilities associated with coordinated cyber and physical attacks. Current modeling techniques for identifying these attacks at Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are either oversimplified or focused on cyber-only or physical-only attacks. The goal of this paper is to provide insights on simultaneous cyber and physical attacks at NPPs. An attack in which adversaries create a Small Break Loss of Coolant Accident (SBLOCA) while at the same time launching a false data injection attack to mimic normal data and prevent NPP shutdown is discussed. False data injection attack scenarios using NPP real-time process data are also provided.