2 research outputs found
The Nuclear Pipeline: Integrating Nuclear Power and Climate Change
This chapter focuses on nuclear scientists and engineers, and the effectiveness of small-scale interventions that could be made to prepare them to consider novel kinds of climate disruptions and how such considerations could affect plant design and operations. Events at Fukushima in 2011 prompted renewed attention to nuclear safety. Soon after, scientists recorded record-breaking global temperatures, particularly during the summer of 2012. Perhaps as a result of these two events, academics and the media have begun asking whether nuclear power plants are robust to natural events beyond the range of available historical data (beyond design basis), including climate-related events such as increasing drought and rising cooling-water temperatures. Science policy scholars, scientists, and engineers outside nuclear science and engineering have begun to pose such questions and model possible effects. This study demonstrates there is almost no public discourse and very little professional discourse within the nuclear science and engineering community on this topic. We posit that this is largely because of the insular culture and professionalization standards of nuclear science and engineering, which could limit the effectiveness of curricular interventions made in engineering education
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Development of an IAEA Training Course for Future U.S. Inspectors
U.S. citizens currently make up only 12% of the positions held in the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards. While the United States has maintained a high level of support for the Agency over the duration of its history, the number of American inspectors currently in the field does not reflect this level of involvement. As a result, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of International Relations, as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) mission, has tasked Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to develop a rigorous two week hands-on training program to encourage and operationally acclimatize U.S. Citizens who are interested in applying for IAEA inspector positions using IAEA authorized equipment at INL. Idaho National Laboratory is one-of-a-kind in its ability to train IAEA inspectors by including training at nuclear facilities on site and includes, for example, direct measurement of an active spent fuel storage cooling pond. This accredited course will introduce and train attendees on the major IAEA systems used in collecting nuclear safeguards data and performing safeguards inspections. Unique in the United States, these classes will give attendees direct hands-on training and will address equipment purpose, function, operating principles, application, and troubleshooting, based upon what would be expected of an IAEA Safeguards Inspector in the field and in the office. Upon completion, U.S. applicants will be better qualified to pursue a position in the IAEA Department of Safeguards Operational Divisions. In support, INL has recently established a new laboratory space to house state of the art nuclear safeguards instrumentation. Currently, equipment installed in the laboratory space includes attended systems: 3DLR (3-D Imaging Laser) for design information verification, a Digital Cerenkov Viewing Device for measurement of spent fuel, HM-5 handheld radiation detectors, quantitative neutron and gamma systems; unattended monitoring systems including: NGAM and MiniGRAND radiation systems and a DMOS camera system, and VACOSS/EOSS Optical Sealing Systems.