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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
Per Øivind Braarud, Høkan Svengren (OECD), Paul Hunton (Duke Energy), Jeffrey Joe (INL), Lew Hanes (Independent Consultant)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 903-917
The guidance for human factors validation of non-safety upgrades is limited. The NUREG-0711 review guide provides comprehensive guidance suitable for new builds or large-scale safety upgrades. Consequently, modernization projects must tackle several challenging questions regarding independence of evaluators, sufficiency and realism of test scenarios, performance measures and the identification of Human Engineering Discrepancies (HEDs). This paper presents a graded approach to human factors integrated system validation applied in turbine control system upgrade and control room modernization at four nuclear units at three Duke Energy sites. Targeted test scenarios with expert assessment, expert observations, simple rating scales and crew scenario interviews provided an approach that adequately could identify human performance aspects of the upgrade. Consistent results between performance measures and expert observations supported confidence in the approach. The upgrade project and operations management found the HEDs identified relevant and dispositioned the identified HEDs satisfactorily suggesting that the approach provided meaningful and useful results. The approach presented can be adapted and applied to other upgrade projects. The technical aspects of Duke’s Fleet Digital Upgrade Program and Control Room Modernization, and the fleet-level HFE Program developed by the Idaho National Laboratory, are the subject of separate, related papers.
