Date:  Friday, January 27th, 2017

Time:  12:20 - 1:10pm EST

Location: Room 124 Min H. Kao Building, Knoxville, TN

Title:  Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and Their Role in Future Power Generation

Presenter:  Brent Shumaker, Senior Systems Engineer, AMS Corporation

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE PRESENTATION RECORDING

Abstract:  Mr. Shumaker will be discussing the topic of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and their role in future power generation portfolio in the U.S. and around the world.  SMRs represent a significant change in how nuclear power plants are constructed, operated, and how they affect the power grid, as compared to the existing base-load nuclear reactors.  I will also include in my presentation information about the work AMS performs to support the nuclear industry and recommendations for professional skills for engineers seeking to enter the power and other industries.

Biography:  Mr. Shumaker is a Senior Systems Engineering Manager at AMS and has over 15 years of software application development and instrumentation and control (I&C) system testing experience in nuclear power plants. He is AMS’ expert in Online Monitoring especially regarding statistical methods, and has presented papers in a number of national and international conferences on the subject of instrument performance monitoring. Mr. Shumaker has served as the principal investigator (PI) for a number of Phase II and Phase III Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Phase II project entitled “Prognostic Methods for Predicting Remaining Useful Life of Nuclear Plant Equipment and Components” and the DOE Phase III project entitled “Online Monitoring Implementation in Boiling Water Reactors”.

Currently, he is serving as the chief engineer for the DOE Phase II SBIR entitled “Quantitative Methods for Reliability and Fault Tolerance Testing of Digital Instrumentation and Control”. Through this project, AMS will develop commercial software qualification technology for the nuclear industry. Presently, Mr. Shumaker is serving as the chairman of a standard committee of the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation (ISA) updating the 67.06 standard entitled, “Performance Monitoring for Nuclear Safety-Related Instrument Channels in Nuclear Power Plants.” Mr. Shumaker also serves as a voting member of the ISA 67.04 standard committee on “Setpoints for Nuclear Safety-Related Instrumentation”. Furthermore, Mr. Shumaker served as a lead author of a report series number no. NP-T-1.2 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) entitled, “On-line Monitoring for Improving Performance of Nuclear Power Plants Part 2: Process and Component Condition Monitoring and Diagnostics”, and served as a Chief Scientific Investigator (CSI) on an IAEA Coordinated Research Project (CRP) entitled “Advanced Surveillance, Diagnostics, and Prognostics Techniques Used for Health Monitoring of Systems, Structures and Components in Nuclear Power Plants”, published in September 2013. Mr. Shumaker is also serving as a consultant for the IAEA project entitled, “Dependability Assessment of Software for Safety Instrumentation and Control Systems at Nuclear Power Plants”, which will be published in 2017. Mr. Shumaker is a member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) where he serves as the Secretary and Chair of the Honors and Awards Committee of the Human Factors and I&C Division (HFICD).