October 30
@
12:00 PM
–
1:00 PM
Thursday, October 30
12:00 – 1:00pm
106 Engineering Research Building
Please contact office@neep.wisc.edu for assistance with remote participation.
Managing Uncertainty in Efficiency, Safety, and Independence in a New Era of Nuclear Regulation
Nuclear power regulation is entering a new era, shaped by technological advancements and major legal shifts— especially the ADVANCE Act and the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. These changes have introduced unprecedented uncertainty into the regulatory landscape. This talk presents an analysis from an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of nuclear engineering, risk assessment, and administrative law, focusing on three key questions: (i) What does “efficient” regulation and licensing mean under the new legal mandate? (ii) Will current safety methods, such as Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), remain viable? (iii) What role does regulatory independence play in ensuring safety? In addressing the second question, the talk will also highlight ongoing research to advance PRA for next-generation reactors and aging plants undergoing policy changes and modernization, including the integration of AI-driven technologies.
Zahra Mohaghegh
Zahra Mohaghegh is a Professor and Donald Biggar Willett Faculty Scholar in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she leads the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory. Her research advances risk science to improve the safety and economic viability of complex technologies, including commercial nuclear power plants and advanced reactors. Dr. Mohaghegh’s expertise includes probabilistic risk assessment, human-system reliability, probabilistic physics of failure, AI trustworthiness, uncertainty analysis, and risk-informed regulation. She has received numerous honors, including the NSF Mid-Career Achievement Award, the George Apostolakis Award in Risk Assessment, multiple Dean’s Awards for Excellence in Research, and the ANS Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award. She also serves on committees of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, actively bridging technical innovation and policymaking in high-consequence industries.
Hammad Khalid
Hammad Khalid is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate and graduate research assistant at the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) lab at UIUC, advised by Prof. Zahra Mohaghegh. His research focuses on developing the Socio-Technical Risk-Informed Automation Trustworthiness Evaluation (ST-RATE) framework—an integrated approach to assess the trustworthiness of AI-driven automation in high-consequence systems such as nuclear power plants. Hammad has contributed to research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. He is a recipient of the Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship and the NEST Fellowship. He holds a Master’s in Nuclear Energy Science and Engineering from Beijing, and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from PIEAS, Pakistan.