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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
C. Wallace, G. West, P. Zacharis, G. Dobie, A. Gachagan (Univ of Strathclyde)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 947-956
Ultrasonic inspections are undertaken on a routine basis during outages of CANDU reactors. Expert interpretation of the data generated during these inspections is used to confirm the integrity of zirconium alloy pressure tubes which house fuel bundles. The inspections form an essential component of the outage programme for CANDU reactors and as such are part of the critical outage path. Analysis of the large volume of data generated is undertaken by a small team of engineers who apply expert knowledge and interpretation through a robust review process that involves multiple human experts reviewing datasets before a consolidated view is determined. Recent work on automated defect detection and analysis on historical ultrasonic data has demonstrated the viability of a decision support tool which can aid the existing analysis process. Testing of the prototype system with engineers and domain experts has enabled improvement in accuracy and capabilities while highlighting tasks within existing procedures where explicit descriptions of all scenarios cannot feasibly be specified and where therefore human judgement plays a more important role. Development of the software, as a support tool to enable more rapid analysis of typical defects, is intended to enable increases in the time available for experts to consider more complex defects. This paper discusses the development of the software prototype, potential deployment routes for the prototype system, considering the interactions with the existing process, benefits which may be realised and limitations that may be addressed through the use of data-driven analysis techniques.
