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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Latest News
DOE awards $2.7B for HALEU and LEU enrichment
Yesterday, the Department of Energy announced that three enrichment services companies have been awarded task orders worth $900 million each. Those task orders were given to American Centrifuge Operating (a Centrus Energy subsidiary) and General Matter, both of which will develop domestic HALEU enrichment capacity, along with Orano Federal Services, which will build domestic LEU enrichment capacity.
The DOE also announced that it has awarded Global Laser Enrichment an additional $28 million to continue advancing next generation enrichment technology.
Ronald L. Boring, Thomas A. Ulrich, Torrey J. Mortenson (INL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1210-1221
This paper provides a concise discussion of levels of automation that may be applied in the design of the control and information systems of control rooms at advanced reactors. The paper highlights that there are two types of automation?control automation for actions performed at the plant and information automation for synthesizing key plant parameters for use by reactor operators. This paper reviews current automation implementations at current nuclear power plants and considers opportunities for enhanced automation in newer plants. While automation may bring clear benefits such as reduced staffing levels, poorly introduced automation can actually have adverse effects on operator performance by relegating operators to tasks at which they perform poorly. This paper concludes with a discussion of considerations for automation relative to primary vs. secondary side control and monitoring.