On the basis of the unique experience of operating reactors with heavy liquid metal coolant–eutectic lead-bismuth alloy in nuclear submarines, the concept of modular small fast reactors SVBR-100 for civilian nuclear power has been developed and validated. The features of this innovative...

The Fukushima nuclear accident on March 11, 2011 in Japan has severely dented the prospects of growth of civilian nuclear power in many countries. Although Japan's worst nuclear accident was triggered by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami, inadequate safety countermeasures and collusive...

Der renommierte Historiker schrieb mit "Ära der Ökologie" (ID-G 15/11) bereits ein umfangreiches Buch über die Umweltbewegung und widmet sich nun der zivilen Nutzung der Atomenergie in Deutschland. Radkau hat dafür mit dem Kernenergie-Experten Hahn seine vor 30 Jahren erschienene...

This report describes methods for prioritizing the risk importances of maintenances using a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). Approaches then are described for quantifying their reliability and risk effects. Two different PRA importance measures, minimal cutset importances and risk reduction...

Since the Reactor Safety Study in the early 1970's, human reliability analysis (HRA) has been evolving towards a better ability to account for the factors and conditions that can lead humans to take unsafe actions and thereby provide better estimates of the likelihood of human error for...

This paper complements other work which has evaluated the cost impacts of radiation standards on the nuclear industry. It focuses on the approaches to valuation of the health and safety benefits of radiation standards and the actual and appropriate processes of benefit-cost comparison. A brief...

This Department of Energy (DOE) technical standards list (TSL) has been prepared by the Office of Nuclear Safety Policy and Standards (EH-31) on the basis of currently available technical information. Periodic updates of this TSL will be issued as additional information is received on...

This paper discusses uncertainty in the output calculation of a model due to uncertainty in inputs values. Uncertainty in input values, characterized by suitable probability distributions, propagates through the model to a probability distribution of an output. Our objective in studying...

Graphical presentations of human actions in incident and accident sequences have been used for many years. However, for the most part, human decision making has been underrepresented in these trees. This paper presents a method of incorporating the human decision process into graphical...

This report introduces a new perspective on the basic concept of dependent failures where the definition of dependency is based on clustering in failure times of similar components. This perspective has two significant implications: first, it relaxes the conventional assumption that dependent...

With rapid economic development, China faces a great challenge to meet its increasing energy demand. Currently, China's energy supply is dominated by coal consumption, while natural gas and oil are in relative short supply. At the same time, nuclear energy is a relatively clean energy without...

Nuclear power produces 15.2% of the world's electricity. Many countries are planning to either introduce nuclear energy or expand their nuclear generation capacity. Design organisations are incorporating both proven means and new approaches for reducing the capital costs of their advanced...

This paper adds to the debate about the role of nuclear power in sustainable development by providing an overview of its current status and future prospects in Europe. The main economic and environmental concerns that nuclear energy could mitigate – energy dependency, air pollution and climate...