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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
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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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.
Gaëtan Robin, Anne-Sophie Hintzy, Stéphane Marchaud, Rachid Hamadi (EdF)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1591-1599
For some years now, studies have proved the feasibility and the interest of providing simulation solutions on the functional and detailed I&C specifications of nuclear units. This is a first step to detect design errors upstream of I&C engineering process. Indeed, the rupture in the design process between detailed specifications and final programmed or wired I&C systems (different tools and different people/staffs are involved for these activities) increases the risk of errors detected late, during on-site requalification tests. Generally, platform tests are performed to verify the final implementation of I&C, but they are often limited to logical functions and performed in open-loop. For several years, EDF Research and Development has been working jointly with EDF engineering units to add I&C closed-loop verifications in design process, especially by studying Model-In-the-Loop (MIL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations. In HIL simulation, an I&C platform is connected to a numeric model that simulates the plant dynamic behavior. The advantage to connect control system to a process model is that exchanged data, namely process and I&C data are more realistic and have a functional meaning. It presents a real interest to have physical feedbacks (for example water level or pressure in a circuit) for the verification of analog controls. Furthermore, the use of real programmed I&C systems allow to perform more realistic tests by taking into account the hardware characteristics of the platform (filtering time, delays, etc.). This approach ultimately increases confidence level in engineering studies before on-site tests and earn time and money by detecting problems during platform tests. The paper details the approach adopted by EDF R & D for the implementation of HIL simulation (in terms of tools, testing platforms), and will present its application on a concrete case study of an analog regulation modification, on 1300MW French Nuclear Power Plants.