The American Nuclear Society has published the first voluntary consensus standard for nuclear reactor design that formally incorporates risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) decision-making in July 2022. ANSI/ANS-30.3-2022, Light Water Reactor Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Design, tells reactor designers how they can incorporate RIPB principles and methods to ensure safety in new commercial light water reactor designs, and it includes a spectrum of options using both deterministic and risk-based approaches. As the first such standard, ANSI/ANS-30.3-2022 represents progress toward the adoption of RIPB principles for nuclear regulation and licensing—a shift the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was directed to make in the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which became law five years ago.

The Advanced Reactor Codes and Standards Collaborative (ARCSC) held its second workshop on November 30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The hybrid event had just over 200 participants, including representatives from standards development organizations (SDOs), the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, national laboratories, government agencies, vendors, advanced reactor designers, and consultants. Also in attendance were representatives from other U.S. industry and international organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. ANS Standards Board chair Andrew Sowder, senior technical executive at EPRI, welcomed attendees to EPRI’s offices, where the workshop was held.

Another calendar year has passed. Before heading too far into 2023, let’s look back at what happened in 2022 for the American Nuclear Society and the nuclear community. In posts that will follow here this week, we have compiled from Nuclear News and Nuclear Newswire what we feel are the top nuclear news stories of the year past.

But first, here are some of ANS’s activities for 2022.

This is the first of five articles to be posted today to look back at the top news stories of 2021 for the nuclear community. The full article, "Looking back at 2021,"was published in the January 2022 issue of Nuclear News.

Quite a year was 2021. In the following stories, we have compiled what we feel are the past year’s top news stories—please enjoy this recap from a busy year in the nuclear community. But first, what about ANS itself? Let’s look at some of ANS’s activities in 2021.

The ASME/ANS Joint Committee on Nuclear Risk Management (JCNRM) has achieved a significant milestone in the advancement of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) technology. ANSI/ASME/ANS RA-­S-­1.4–2021 [1], Probabilistic Risk Assessment Standard for Advanced Non-­Light Water Reactor Nuclear Power Plants, has been approved by the JCNRM, the ANS Standards Board, the ASME Board of Nuclear Codes and Standards, and the American Nuclear Standards Institute.

Since the 1980s, the nuclear power industry in the United States has worked to enhance the regulatory framework for nuclear facilities by making it more risk-informed and performance-based (RIPB). This has had some success in improving safety and reducing regulatory burden by focusing resources on the most risk--significant areas and allowing greater flexibility in choosing ways to achieve desired safety outcomes. However, there are further opportunities for the use of RIPB approaches in addressing current regulations and applying implementation tools, and in developing new RIPB regulations and advanced tools to further sharpen the focus on risk and performance outcomes.

ANS publishes standards that set forth requirements for the design, manufacture, or operation of a piece of equipment. These standards can address computer firmware and software, and can address the necessary physical and functional features of equipment, its safe application, or some combination of these. These standards are applied on a voluntary basis, and when adopted by a state or federal agency, they becomes part of their mandatory codes.

ANS standards are available at the ANS Standards store.

The following standards have been approved, published, or are open for comment.

The ANS Standards Committee has just published ANSI/ANS-2.8-2019, “Probabilistic Evaluation of External Flood Hazards for Nuclear Facilities.” The new standard supersedes ANS-2.8-1992, which was withdrawn in 2002.