A Dialogic Perspective on Managing Knowledge Differences: Problem-Solving while Building a Nuclear Power Plant Safety System

To manage knowledge differences, existing research has documented two sets of practices: traversing and transcending knowledge boundaries. What research has yet to explore, however, is the dynamics through which traversing or transcending practices emerge in response to a particular problem situation. Using a qualitative, inductive study of the problem episodes encountered by groups of experts working on a large-scale project to build the safety system for a nuclear power plant, we observed that the emergence of traversing or transcending depended on how experts interpreted problems and initiated dialogues around specific problems. Our work provides insight into the condition through which knowledge integration trajectories may emerge.

Characteristics of joint heavy rain and high sea level events on the Finnish coast in 1961-2019

<p>The simultaneous occurrence of heavy precipitation and high sea level can lead to more severe impacts than if these hazards occur in isolation. In this study, the joint occurrence of heavy precipitation and high sea level (hereafter compound events) on the Finnish coast in 1961-2019 is investigated. We use tide gauge observations from nine Finnish tide gauges and FMI ClimGrid gridded precipitation data. Two levels for the extremeness of precipitation and sea level were considered: elevated and high, with elevated corresponding to 90 percentile and high to 98 percentile of daily precipitation and maximum sea level. Elevated compound events were defined as days when both sea level and precipitation reached elevated levels, and high compound events were defined as days when both sea level and precipitation reached high levels. </p><p>First, the climatology of precipitation, high sea level, and compound events are studied. This is done by analysing frequency distributions of these events. Then, the interannual variability and long-term trends of the compound events are presented, and finally the synoptic weather patterns and the atmospheric circulation indices promoting the compound events are analysed. </p><p>We found that compound events are most abundant in late autumn and early winter, and they are typically caused by passing extratropical cyclones. The frequency of compound events has increased during the study period, in particular in the Bothnian Bay. The increasing trend of these events was linked to the more positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index during the recent decades. When the total annual number of compound events is considered, the Scandinavian blocking pattern (SCAND) was found to be the most controlling atmospheric circulation pattern, with negative SCAND promoting more compound events and vice versa.</p><p>The work presented here is part of project PREDICT (Predicting extreme weather and sea level for nuclear power plant safety) that supports nuclear power plant safety in Finland.</p>

Application of soft computing techniques in WWER nuclear power plant safety

Nowadays, Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) is one of the intended energy resources for the world requirement energy in future, and nuclear power plants provided 11 percent of the world’s electricity production in 2014. Meanwhile, nuclear power plant safety has always been one of the most critical issues in the world. In this paper, the nuclear power plant safety improvement using Soft Computing Techniques were analyzed. For this purpose, the support system based on Neuro-Fuzzy Diagnosis System (NFDs) method and Genetic Algorithms (GAs) approach were used. The obtained result showed that the first symptom is P3 (pressurizer pressure) and second order symptom is P2 (core coolant average temperature) in both approaches. The comparison between the NFDs method and the GAs approaches indicated that the GAs in data test results was faster than the NFDs results.