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C00002 00002		The proposals seems to me to be state-of-the-art with regard
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	The proposals seems to me to be state-of-the-art with regard
to the expert system and knowledge-based techniques proposed.
That is, it seems to me to be similar to what Stanford expert
system people would propose if they were interested in nuclear
power systems, which they aren't to my knowledge.

	The proposal is clear and well written.

	The authors have taken the nuclear problems seriously
and made a real effort to become acquainted with them.  I don't
know enough about nuclear power plants to judge their success
in this.

	Their equipment and proposed equipment is adequate
for the level of work they propose.

	The reputation of their previous medical AI work is ...

	
	In my opinion, the hierarchical methodology they propose
has serious limitations, especially with regard to carrying
out the Teller proposal to answer questions like, "What if
I turn valve X to the left?".  Namely, the hierarch is of
properties of the system as a whole.  This corresponds to their
work and other AI work in medical diagnosis, wherein the reasoning
usually involves properties of the system as a whole.

	It seems to me that their formalism isn't primarily designed
to represent relations between different parts of the system, e.g.
"valve 3 being stuck open is causing excea pressure of 5000 lbs
per square inch in line 5 preventing valve 119 from closing.
In general, their representation doesn't emphasize quantitative
relationships, and I don't remember their giving any examples
of quantitative relationships.

	All this makes it difficult for their work to interact with
ordinary simulation studies, of which I presume there are a great
number in the reactor industry.

	Nevertheless, I doubt that a much better proposal is likely
to originate from the AI community in the near future.  In my opinion,
they are likely to find out the limitations of their methodology in
the course of carrying out the proposed study.

	If asked for a definite recommendation, I would offer following:

	1. Support the proposal at the scale proposed.

	2. Recommend that they study how to incorporate conventional
simulation in their system and offer to support an additional
person expert in this.  Such people are available and hopefully
the interaction will produce light as well as heat.

	3. Recommend that they broaden their AI model to include
relations between parts of the system and relations between
quantitative functions of the states of parts at different times.