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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
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Latest News
Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
Mark Burzynski (NewClear Day, Inc.)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 653-663
The recent trend for nuclear safety-related instrumentation and control (I&C) applications is that field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology is being used more frequently. Software verification and validation (V&V) activities are used to provide objective evidence that the software and its associated products and processes conform to requirements (e.g., for correctness, completeness, consistency, and accuracy). Standards are used to provide accepted practices and conventions for software V&V activities. Regulators rely on industry standards to support their review of digital I&C systems used for safety-related applications. A key challenge for the review of FPGA-based I&C systems in the United States is the use of IEEE Std 1012-2004 to develop the appropriate software V&V plan. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) endorses IEEE Std 1012-2004 as an acceptable approach for meeting the agency’s regulatory requirements on the V&V of safety system software. The software-centric nature of IEEE Std 1012 is a limitation on its effectiveness in establishing a common framework for V&V processes, activities, and tasks in support of FPGA-based development processes. The use of IEEE Std 1012 to define the V&V requirements for FPGA-based I&C applications will always require the standard requirements to be tailored and adapted to the FPGA technology. The required adaptations limit the usefulness of the standard to support efficient reviews of safety-related I&C applications by the NRC, since adaptations made for each project must be reviewed for technical adequacy. The paper makes recommendations to on the use of IEEE Std 1012 with FPGA technology and to improve the regulatory framework for FPGA-based projects based on a case study involving a digital I&C platform developed using IEC standards.