Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Let's Play Acronym!

We all know it's challenging to read laws or standards, really anything more than a fairly simple bullet point list and I'll start to lose interest after the first paragraph or less. These are very important documents but you're pretty unlikely to read them for pleasure, unless you're a really bored masochist or it's your job/assignment to. Added to the dry, complex nature of all the regulations out there for the nuclear community are infinite acronyms and backronyms that serve to confuse the casual or unfamiliar reader even further. So, here's a list of a bunch that you might need to concern yourself with as a member of the public:

  1. NPP: Nuclear Power Plant
  2. NRC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
  3. IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency
  4. BWR: Boiling Water Reactor
  5. PWR: Pressurized Water Reactor
  6. CERN: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or
                  European Organization for Nuclear Research
  7. DBA: Design Basis Accident
  8. DOE: Department of Energy
  9. SNF:  Spent Nuclear Fuel
  10. HLW: High Level Waste
  11. ILW: Intermediate Level Waste
  12. LLW: Low Level Waste
  13. INSAG: International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group
  14. MOX: Mixed Oxide (fuel)
  15. PSA: Public Safety Assessment
  16. CFR: Code of Federal Regulations
  17. ATWS: Anticipated Transient Without Scram
  18. GDC: General Design Criteria
  19. LOCA: Loss of Cooling Accident
  20. AFW: Auxiliary Feed Water
  21. IRPA: International Radiation Protection Association
  22. ANSI: American National Standards Institute
  23. ALAP: As Low As Possible
  24. ALARA: As Low As Reasonably Achievable
  25. ALARP: As Low As Reasonably Practicable
  26. ALATA: As Low As Technically Achievable
  27. ARGONAUT: Argonne Nuclear Assembly for University Training
  28. ARMS: Rrea Radiation Monitoring System (not appendage on your body)
  29. ARS: Acute Radiation Syndrome
  30. FSAR: Final Safety Analysis Report
  31. RSIC: Radiation Shielding Information Center
  32. ICRP: International Commission on Radiological Protection
  33. ASME: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  34. RPV: Reactor Pressure Vessel
  35. JANAP: Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Publication
  36. USPHS: U.S. Public Health Service
  37. LEP: Local Emergency Protection
  38. BTS: Brazilian Thorium Sludge
  39. COPS: Containment Overpressure Protection Systems
  40. B&W: Babcock & Wilcox Co. (now Framatome)
  41. BONUS: Boiling Nuclear Superheat Reactor
  42. BPVC: Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee
  43. PA: Protected Area
  44. BOL: Beginning of Life
  45. ATWT: Anticipated Aransient Without Trip

That's 45 right there and you probably skipped to the bottom of the list to read down here and now that you realize there isn't much, you went back up and read the rest of the list because you felt bad. It's okay, this is just an example of the how the human brain reacts to vast lists of information. This was a list of 45, here is a list of 4500 acronyms published by the NRC. I pulled these off of this Nuclear Energy Agency website and that NRC list in the sentence above. Nuclear safety is important it's everyone's right to know what you're being protected from and how.

-Michael

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 17, 2016 at 8:38 PM

    I did not go back up top and read the rest of them. This actually makes me mad because of all the valuable space in my brain that is now taken up by the acronyms instead of useful information. It gets ridiculous.

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  2. Nuclear NancyFebruary 18, 2016 at 5:11 AM

    I read half way before getting annoyed at the industry (although to be honest, I don't think we're worse than other industries). Over the summer, the nuclear plant I was interning at got a new plant manager and one of the first changes that happened is in communications we were told to always say the words before using the acronym so you would say "protected area" and then the next time you talked about it in conversation you could say PA. This was to force people to know the words behind the acronym and not just a general idea of what the acronym means.

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    Replies
    1. Michael.B-7pdFebruary 20, 2016 at 6:39 PM

      That's really helpful. I know in the nuclear Navy at interviews they push for zero variable-speak. So like you'd never say V=IR, instead you're "encouraged" to say voltage equals current times resistance to prove that you know it and to encourage usage later down the line. I know we have always had to define acronyms in our nuclear engineering curriculum reports before we use them but I really realized the value of a acronym list at eh beginning or end of a paper. Like solution formatting, it'll help make the industry more transparent.

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