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Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
Gary Johnson (Private Consultant)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1102-1113
In January 2007 the World Nuclear Association (WNA) established the Cooperation in Reactor Design Evaluation and Licensing Working Group (CORDEL) with the aim of stimulating a dialogue between the nuclear industry and nuclear regulators on the benefits and means of achieving a worldwide convergence of safety standards for reactor designs. CORDEL is comprised of several technical working groups including the Digital Instrumentation and Control Task Force (DICTF). Soon after CORDEL was established, the DICTF identified safety classification as a topic where a better understanding of the regulatory practices in various countries could improve the nuclear industries’ ability to license new nuclear power plant designs in various countries. One of the issues identified was the need to understand inconsistencies between the safety requirements established by international and national codes and standards. The first step in this effort was to examine the formally defined terminology that the various organizations use to define five key concepts: Defense-in-depth and diversity, Separation, Redundancy, Reliability, and Spurious activation. This paper summarizes the approach and conclusions of this study. We found important inconsistencies both between the terms that various organizations use for the above key concepts and the definitions of the key concepts themselves. We also found, however, that some of the existing definitions encompass the ideas of all of the organizations studied. Therefore, we believe that it is possible to establish common terms and definitions for the five concepts. This work may also represent a prototype methodology for harmonizing terms and definitions used for other key concepts.