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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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Hanna Koskinen, Jari Laarni, Marja Liinasuo (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Leena Salo (Fortum Power and Heat Oy)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 488-498
We present an application of Systems Usability Case (SUC) as an overall human factors validation approach in a nuclear power plant control room modernization project. SUC enables a requirement-based human factors evaluation of complex technical systems that may cover the entire verification and validation process. The SUC is based on the Safety Case approach and on the Systems Usability construct. One of the main aims of establishing a Safety Case is to bring to the front the arguments and evidence for safety in such a way that the reasoning supports the work of a regulator or licensing organization. In the end, the SUC enables evaluating the Systems Usability of a system and making a reasonable solid argument about the acceptance of the system for use. The question is how the conclusions are reached through a reasoning process, in which the arguments are made about the evidence to approve or reject the claim concerning the quality of the system. The paper presents an application of the SUC to real data from an integrated system validation of the modernized main control room of Loviisa nuclear power plant. The results of the validation are discussed from the point of view of how the SUC approach enabled forming a statement about the acceptance of the control room. Moreover, some examples are given to demonstrate the learnings (e.g., strengths and weaknesses) as well as the development needs of the SUC approach.