Roles of Information Technology in Nuclear Criticality Safety Training

Conference · Sun Jun 16 04:00:00 EDT 2013

OSTI ID:1088443

Huang, S. ^[1]; Lee, M. ^[2]; Morman, J. ^[3]; Goold, R. ^[1]; Lee, C. ^[1]; Heinrichs, D. ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
2. US Department of Energy (USDOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Livermore, CA (United States)
3. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

For many years, the nuclear criticality safety (NCS) community has recognized the urgent need to develop a criticality safety workforce to meet the country’s nuclear operations support requirements. While there are many causes for the current workforce shortage problem, the retirement of many experienced personnel from NCS has exacerbated the situation. The Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) has established a website (http://ncsp.llnl.gov) to assist newcomers to this field. Among other things, the DOE NCSP website offers a series of nuclear criticality safety engineer training (NCSET) modules to assist various DOE sites in training nuclear criticality safety engineers. For years, this section of the website has attracted many users worldwide, and records more than eight thousand downloads of the modules per year. Rapid advances in information technology (IT) and communication tools have reshaped the training field and offer improving training modalities. Since the NCSET modules were originally developed in text mode, it was recognized that much of that training could be improved by utilizing these IT innovations. This paper reports a new approach to enhance the NCSET training modules and discusses the use of IT and new communication tools as effective means to help manage NCS workforce development.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); US Department of Energy (USDOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Livermore, CA (United States); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 1088443
• Report Number(s): LLNL--CONF-609574
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
NCS Workforce Development
NCSET Training Modules
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)