ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Richard W. Supler (ENERCON), invited
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1275-1283
Increasing challenges due to obsolete systems and components, as well as recent market conditions, have driven nuclear power plant (NPP) owners to increase their focus on upgrading outdated analog Instrumentation and Control (I&C) systems to digital as an effective approach for reducing the O&M costs and increasing reliability. As most operating plants in the U.S. have already extended their license to 60 years (and several are preparing for an extension to 80 years), upgrading outdated 1960s and 70s technology to Digital becomes unavoidable. Digital Systems provide the flexibility of software parameterization, calibrations, and setpoint adjustments. Customization of system functionality through software offers almost endless combinations of engineered alarms, self-checks, and automated surveillance checks. The customizability of application software provides operators with a combination of controls with which they are familiar, as well as the capability of new and improved controls and interfaces. To greatly increase the probability of implementing a successful analog to digital upgrade, adequate planning and incorporation of a project life cycle process for an Analog to Digital Control Upgrade is key to ensuring all required Regulatory and Industry Standards are met, especially for Safety Related Applications. One important planning consideration is realizing and understanding the additional I&C Calculation related Uncertainty Errors involved with Digital Systems over and above those evaluated for analog systems. These additional considerations also provide an opportunity to perform reanalysis of prior drift evaluations using historical calibration data, especially for many of the front end analog sensors, to determine if additional margin can be obtained between the setpoints and corresponding Technical Specification Allowable and Analytical Limits. The re-analyzed drift evaluation may allow for reduction of previously assumed uncertainty error values that may have been based on overly conservative vendor specifications rather than actual operational data. The additional margin realized may allow for extension of calibration surveillance frequency intervals resulting in cost savings that could be used towards the upgrade. Also, when an analog instrument loop is replaced with a digital loop, the sensor is often the only component in the loop that is susceptible to drift; therefore, the channel drift is reduced, providing more margin. Conversely, since some instrument loop components are replaced with digital components (e.g., I/O modules, software) new errors could be introduced into the measurement with the use of digital technology (e.g., errors that could result from analog-to digital or digital to analog conversion or from numerical methods used in the software (e.g., curve fitting)). This paper and presentation will present an overview of the additional uncertainty error considerations involved with Nuclear Plant Analog to Digital Controls Upgrades, as well as describing the method and benefits of reevaluating the existing drift evaluations for the existing components that may be reused as part of the upgrade for consideration of extending Calibration Surveillance Frequency Intervals.