Integration of Reactor Design, Operations, and Safety
Nuclear power plant design is examined as a whole system in this MIT OpenCourseWare course, combining engineering sciences, reactor physics, and safety assessment. Topics include materials issues in plant design and operations, thermal design, fuel depletion and fission-product poisoning, and how temperature affects reactivity. The course covers safety considerations in regulation and operations, including the evolution of the regulatory process, the concept of defense in depth, General Design Criteria, accident analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and risk-informed regulation. Materials come from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering department and are provided free through OpenCourseWare, including lecture notes and assignments, under a Creative Commons license. No certificate is offered. The course suits students who already have grounding in reactor physics and want to see how design, operations, and safety regulation fit together in an actual plant.