Within ONR, Fault Studies is the application of design basis, probabilistic safety and severe accident analysis techniques to Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and other nuclear facilities. In some cases inspectors may specialise in some of these types of analysis and/or focus on a particular type of nuclear facility; for instance some inspectors specialise in fault studies assessment of nuclear chemical plants.
A typical accident fault sequence analysed might be a loss of coolant accident on a Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). To understand this accident requires good knowledge of reactor kinetics, heat transfer and fluid dynamics and how major system components behave and interact with one another under severe changes of pressure and temperature. The challenge here is to understand the behaviour of a plant under a wide range of fault conditions using deterministic safety analysis techniques, most of which require the application of complex computer codes. Therefore fault studies specialists need to have a very good understanding of the underlying science (in this case neutronics, fluid dynamics and head transfer) and how the science is used through the application of computer codes to predict the plant's behaviour in extreme fault or accident conditions. For nuclear facilities other than NPP, experience in Chemical Process Engineering, preferably nuclear but at least Tier 1 COMAH, would normally be a pre-requisite, with a considerable part of that experience having been applied to analysis of high hazard facilities under fault conditions.
For NPP fault studies we are looking for experts who have a good understanding of plant behaviour of NPP under a wide range of fault conditions or a good working knowledge of reactor fuel design. Familiarity with the use of one or more analytical Design Basis Analysis codes (PANTHER, MACE, TRAC, RELAP etc.) would be an advantage.
For other nuclear facilities experience in the analysis of complex behaviour of high hazard process plant (nuclear or possibly Tier 1 COMAH) under fault conditions is essential. A good understanding of supporting techniques such as HAZOP, fault trees, event trees, reliability block diagrams etc. or application of analytical methods such as CFD would be an advantage.
As well as providing guidance and advice in your specialism, you would need to be able to lead on the technical assessment of fault studies aspects of safety cases liaising with other specialist inspectors.
Experience
We are looking for people who can apply their specialist knowledge to the regulatory assessment of nuclear safety cases, for example:
- Knowledge of either light water moderated or graphite moderated reactors from either a design or operational background;
- Experience in developing or assessing nuclear reactor fault studies, in terms of reactor transient behaviour, to establish the operational limits and conditions associated with them;
- Experience in defining the conditions and conducting predictive studies associated with core follow methods or carrying out the day-to-day monitoring associated with such activities;
- Experience in providing numerical analysis of NPP transients or steady state safety analyses using CFD;
- Experience in the lifecycle of reactor fuel from design through to safe disposal; and
- Experience in complex safety analyses for high hazard non-NPP facilities that can be shown to be readily transferable to the nuclear sector.
How to apply
Please visit our recruitment portal.