Special Journal Issue on Advances in Probabilistic Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification Methods for Nuclear Safety

The ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering is currently accepting manuscripts for a special issue focusing on the topic “Advances in Probabilistic Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification Methods for Nuclear Safety.” Authors who are interested in having their manuscripts included in the special issue, to be published in June 2022, should submit their manuscripts by October 1, 2021.
 
Nuclear safety amounts to the prevention of accidents potentially occurring in nuclear installations and the mitigation of their consequences of undue radioactive material dispersion. Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM) is a consolidated way to satisfy the safety requirements of nuclear installations.

PSAM tools and methods can be upgraded to benefit the many technological, methodological and technical advancements in recent years. In this context, the present special issue aims at presenting the methodologies potentially enabling breakthroughs in PSAM for further enhancing nuclear safety.

The motivation of this special issue comes from the many interesting works on these topics presented at the ESREL2020 PSAM15 Conference, which combined the 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2020) and the 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference (PSAM 15). The two were held remotely November 1-5, 2020. Extended versions of these works presented at the ESREL2020 PSAM15 Conference are particularly welcome. Relevant papers from other authors are also encouraged.

Manuscripts to be included in the special issue should concentrate on a range of topics including risk analysis methods; uncertainty analysis and quantification; human factors, accidents and disasters; nuclear engineering; information storage and processing including Big Data; and mechanical assets and infrastructures. Methodologies of particular interest include but are not limited to computational fluid dynamics; computational modeling; advanced Monte Carlo simulation; machine learning and artificial intelligence; Bayesian networks; dynamic reliability; prognostics and health management; and uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.
 
Applications of interest cover all aspects of PSAM, including nuclear systems modeling; accident investigation; importance measures; quantification of uncertainty; sensitivity analysis; external and internal hazards risk assessment; organizational factors; multi-unit risk assessment; and risk aggregation.
Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to the journal by October 1, 2021, via Journals Connect at journaltool.asme.org. Authors who have an account should log in and select “Submit Paper” at the bottom of the page.  Authors without an account should select “Submissions” and follow the steps.  At the Paper Submittal page, authors should select the “ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering” and then select the special issue “Advances in Probabilistic Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification Methods for Nuclear Safety (SI051B).” Papers received after the deadline or papers not selected for inclusion in the special issue may be accepted for publication in a regular issue.

The special issue guest editors are Piero Baraldi, Professor, Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, piero.baraldi@polimi.it; Francesco Di Maio, Professor, Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, francesco.dimaio@polimi.it; and Enrico Zio, Professor, Centre for Research on Risk and Crises (CRC) / MINES ParisTech / PSL Research University, Sophia Antipolis, France / Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, enrico.zio@polimi.it.
 
For more information on the ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering, visit https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/risk. To learn more about the ASME Journal Program, visit www.asme.org/publications-submissions/journals/information-for-authors.