Congratulations to Dr. Mihai Diaconeasa, assistant professor of nuclear engineering at NC State University, recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Distinguished Early Career Award. His research, “The Application of Dynamic PRA to Revolutionize the PRA Model Development during the Design, Licensing, and Maintenance Activities of Current LWRs and Advanced Reactors”, will demonstrate the way dynamic PRA insights can be used to rethink how we can address the completeness problem of the PRA models during the design, licensing, and maintenance activities of current LWRs and advanced reactors by including dynamics observed during actual operating events.
Dr. Diaconeasa leads the design and development of ADS-IDAC, a dynamic probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methodology and software platform for nuclear power plants and is the founder of the OpenPRA Initiative dedicated to designing and developing a wide range of traditional probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methods and open source software. During his appointment as postdoctoral research scholar at the UCLA’s B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences, he has led the development of the Hybrid Causal Logic Analyzer system risk and reliability software used to enhance the design process and assess the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts usage in space systems for extended deep space missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Phoenix human reliability analysis (HRA) methodology and software adopted by the Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (JNRA).
Currently, Dr. Diaconeasa is the Vice Chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis Division (SERAD) Executive Committee, the Vice Chair of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Nuclear Installations Safety Division (NISD) Executive Committee and the Vice Chair of the ANS Advanced Reactor Working Group (ARWG). Also, he serves as the Chair of the ANS Standards Committee ANS-30.2 and member of ANS-30.1 Working Groups under the Research and Advanced Reactors Consensus Committee and is the Working Group Vice Chair of the “Probabilistic Design Methods” Subcommittee, “Plant Systems Design” ASME Standards Committee.
More than $3.1 million was awarded through the U.S. DOE Distinguished Early Career Program (DECP) to support five distinguished early career faculty in five states. This program invests in the innovative research and education programs of outstanding early career university faculty poised to pave new lines of inquiry and advance mission critical research directions in nuclear energy.