Typical engineering systems in applications with high failure consequences such as nuclear reactor plants often employ redundancy and diversity of equipment in an effort to lower the probability of failure and therefore risk. However, it has long been recognized that dependencies exist in these...

Direct coal liquefaction has been studied and practiced since the 1930s. It was used in Germany during World War II to produce synthetic fuels when there was no oil allowed into the country. Since then, it has been studied in the United States and many different technologies have been...