Risk Analysis & Policy Setting for Nuclear Technological Systems
Abstract: The Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) laboratory (http://soteria.npre.illinois.edu/) in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) focuses on the advancement of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), which is one of the key pillars of the Risk-Informed Regulatory Framework for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In the recent decade, the gap between the “demand for risk-informed design, operation, and maintenance of nuclear technologies” and PRA education in nuclear engineering departments has widened. This gap is frequently highlighted by U.S. national labs, regulatory agencies, and industry, emphasizing the need for a nuclear engineering workforce that is equipped with risk analysis knowledge and probabilistic methodologies. The SoTeRiA team is making NPRE a leading department in actively addressing this gap by educating the next generation of nuclear engineers in risk analysis, thereby increasing job opportunities for NPRE students. The SoTeRiA lab has integrated classical PRA techniques with simulation-based methods, leading to the development of a new multi-level computational platform, called Integrated PRA (I-PRA), that enables the coupling of underlying degradation mechanisms with component-level failures and system-level risk scenarios. This talk provides an overview of some of SoTeRiA’s ongoing research projects and risk analysis courses at NPRE.
Bio: Zahra Mohaghegh, the Director of the SoTeRiA laboratory, is an Assistant Professor in NPRE and an affiliate with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at UIUC. She has recently become a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM). With the desire to create an international think-tank for safety, Dr. Mohaghegh has initiated research collaborations; for example, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to develop risk methodologies for advanced reactors and with Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to advance simulation models for risk-informed emergency preparedness and response. Since 2013, Dr. Mohaghegh and her team have published more than fifty journal and conference papers that have created a large number of citations. SoTeRiA research has generated over 4 million dollars in funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) for advancing the I-PRA algorithm for the deployment of new technologies, National Science Foundation (NSF) for big data analytics in PRA, and large-scale industry projects for fire PRA and the risk-informed resolution of Generic Safety Issue 191 (GSI-191). She is the winner of several national and international awards (e.g., American Nuclear Society Award for her innovation in risk analysis, Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research from the College of Engineering, George Apostolakis early-career award in risk assessment, and the Zonta International Award for her contribution to modeling large-scale complex systems) but, most of all, she is grateful for having been trained by professors who are pioneers of PRA and for the opportunity to train the next-generation of PRA leaders in SoTeRiA!
