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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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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July 2025
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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.
David R. Desaulniers (NRC)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1769-1777
The human factors engineering (HFE) validation of a nuclear power plant control room design, or of a design modification (e.g., for modernization), is a complex undertaking that faces many technical and logistical challenges. These challenges include conducting validations that address the diversity of operating conditions, staffing configurations, and failure scenarios that the plant will experience, or must be designed to tolerate. Such challenges must be addressed within the practical constraints of available resources (e.g., test personnel, participants, testbeds, and time). How these challenges are addressed can impact the confidence that vendors, nuclear plant operating companies, and regulatory authorities have in validation results and conclusions. Since 2013, the Nuclear Energy Agency’s Working Group on Human and Organizational Factors has been working with industry experts in control room validation to identify and advance the development of methods for enhancing confidence in control room validations. The most recent product of these efforts is a working group report that describes a general approach and rationale for validating systems through a series of successive, coordinated validation activities. The working group refers to this approach as, multi-stage validation (MSV). This paper summarizes the central concepts and issues discussed in the working group report, including the defining characteristics of MSV and those that characterize an effective MSV implementation. Also addressed in this paper are methods and issues important to MSV implementation and its further development as an approach to the HFE validation of nuclear power plant control room designs and modifications.
