What differentiates nuclear power plants from others is that primary energy release takes place by fission reactions. Although other types of reactors exist, the vast majority of today’s commercial NPPs use solid state nuclear fuel to heat fluid that finally causes ordinary steam to turn a turbo-generator set.

As we know, technology is “hard” and human behaviour is “soft”. In the following text, I try to review few essential points about how interaction between soft and hard parties are handled in the nuclear domain – or how it should be.

Chernobyl – What comes to your mind of the word? A small town in Ukraine? Name of the popular TV series? Something bad that happened in the 80s? The worst nuclear accident ever to strike humankind?

Before my international relocation to the Middle East I used to work in a multi-cultural Nuclear Power Plant project in Finland. The company I worked for back then had around 15 different nationalities and the spoken language was English. I thought I knew what a multi-cultural working environment meant, but boy was I wrong!

The recently published international climate report, which was widely discussed in media, paints a dismal picture of our future, unless we manage to control our greenhouse gas emissions. Most significantly, we need to control the emissions of the traffic and energy sectors. The role of renewable energy is stressed, but one must not forget the benefits of nuclear power in the fight against climate change.

Big Data processing and machine learning have lately been popular topics in various publications and events. I see great potential benefits for the industry in these subjects, on various levels. Especially interesting is the use of Big Data processing an machine learning in condition monitoring. There are several different applications, but the goal is to optimize condition monitoring and move toward a more proactive or predictive maintenance, which also improves availability.