A session focused on the risk management frameworks developed by various organizations under the federal government of Canada, highlighting their approaches, challenges, and best practices.

Measurement Canada is a regulatory agency under Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, with nationwide authority over legal metrology in Canada. It oversees the enforcement of laws regarding trade measurement, ensuring accuracy in the purchase and sale of measured goods. Due to the potential risks of non-compliances, Measurement Canada has developed a risk management framework (RMF) that aligns well with the Marketplace Protection and Promotion (MPP) program, which regulates and provides oversight over several aspects of the Canadian marketplace, including trade measurement. The developed RMF is based on a deep-defense concept with four defense levels as well as compliance barriers. The first two levels (prevention and monitoring) are used to prevent non-compliances while the last two defense levels should permit control of non-compliances and limit their impact when they occur.

The Risk Management Framework is a key policy instrument that outlines a principles-based approach to risk management for all federal organizations.

This panel discussion brings together international researchers and practitioners to discuss the human factors needs for advanced reactors. Advanced reactors have the potential to fundamentally change the concept of operations for reactors, including remote and autonomous operations. The panelists will discuss what challenges there are in developing these systems and what research still needs to be undertaken to deploy these advanced reactors.

Recent statutory changes, executive directives, and judicial developments have placed U.S. nuclear risk regulation at an inflection point. While probabilistic risk assessment remains central to risk-informed, performance-based regulation, evolving policy signals—including calls to focus on “credible, realistic risk,” and to align agency missions with efficiency and societal benefit—raise fundamental questions about how risk will be defined, bounded, and used in regulatory decision-making.\r\n\r\nThis panel will examine recent developments and their implications. Panelists will explore advanced reactor licensing, the relationship between agency discretion and congressional direction, and how risk-informed approaches can remain decision-relevant in a rapidly evolving legal and institutional landscape. The goal is to explore how the risk community can prepare for a regulatory environment in which the architecture of risk management may be changing.\r\n\r\nQuestions to be addressed include: \r\n\r\n• What defines “safe enough”? NRC’s foundational policy statements (such as the safety-goal policy) were developed decades ago, and have not kept pace with statutory changes, reactor innovation, and recent changes in regulatory philosophy. \r\n\r\n• How best should the NRC address considerations of efficiency and societal benefit, which are now considered within its purview? Does this require restructuring of risk analyses and/or the regulatory decision process? \r\n\r\n• What does efficiency mean for the process of nuclear regulation? How can efficiency best be achieved without sacrificing safety?\r\n\r\n• There are emerging tensions between agency-defined safety policy on the one hand, and congressional/executive-branch direction on the other. This creates questions about agency discretion and independence, including the role of regulatory independence in ensuring nuclear safety.\r\n\r\n• The call to focus on “credible, realistic risk” in Executive Order 14300 raises both technical and institutional questions. Is this a useful focus, or can it excessively narrow the scope of risk analysis? \r\n\r\n• How can NRC best prepare for potential additional changes in future administrations, after several decades of regulatory stability? \r\n\r\n• Risk-informed, performance-based regulation is widely endorsed, and demonstrated to be effective—but unevenly implemented. How will risk-informed, performance-based regulation function in the new regulatory environment? Can these risk tools be applied in a way that enhances both efficiency and safety? \r\n\r\n• Are we seeing a move toward methodological pluralism? What kinds of methods are necessary and appropriate in advanced reactor regulation?\r\n\r\nPanelists will include Vicki Bier (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Jon Facemire (Nuclear Energy Institute), Zahra Mohaghegh (University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign), and Adam Stein (Breakthrough Institute).

The recent deaths of James Reason (1938-2025) and Alan Swain (1923-2021), two of the principal figures respectively in human error and human reliability analysis (HRA), serve as reminders of the enduring importance of these areas for human factors and ergonomics (HFE). For example, human error is one of the standard metrics of human performance used across HFE. The study of the causes of human error has been one of the key areas behind accident investigations and safety engineering. The field of human variability seeks to understand the range of human performance, including individual differences behind errors. The prevention of human error has been the focus of disciplines like high reliability organizations, safety management, and human performance improvement; the capacity to recover from human error has been one focus of resilience engineering; and the quantification of human error has been the domain of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) and HRA.

A look ahead to the 50th anniversary of the ANS PSA conference that will be occurring in 2027 in California.