Learn how nuclear licensing is being transformed with AI technology to enhance safety and efficiency in power plants.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory , headed by the Department of Energy, have penned a memorandum of understanding with AI company Atomic Canyon to refine the licensing process for nuclear power plant s.
As part of this, artificial intelligence technology will be utilized for reviewing license applications in the aftermath of this deal.The agreement was signed during the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop , which was held at the Knoxville Convention Center.It entails shared aims to use high-performance computing to create simulations that will ensure the safety of designs while accelerating the licensing process with AI. “ORNL was critical to the development of nuclear energy more than 75 years ago, and we are committed to advancing the technologies needed to sustain and grow the nation’s nuclear capacity today,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. “The time is now. With new capabilities enabled by AI and partners like Atomic Canyon, we can help the nuclear industry unleash American energy,” he stated.The need for AI in nuclear licensingThe nuclear industry is overseen by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission , which strives to ensure the safety and reliability of every nuclear reactor in the country. Licensing new reactors is one of NRC’s major responsibilities, which boasts a lengthy timeframe for research and reporting.AI houses the potential to save precious time and human labor by refining reporting requirements and speeding up nuclear licensing and regulatory compliance processes. Introduction of this technology will also help achieve the ambitious new deadlines the U.S. government has set for licensing designs and commissioning new nuclear power plants. What’s with the supercomputer?ORNL is home to the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, the home of Frontier, the fastest supercomputer in the world. It also houses other world-leading facilities for applied energy sciences.A combination of these facilities will enable Atomic Canyon to access cutting-edge tools for simulation, digital qualification, and material development.“We’re entering into a new, radically more advanced era of nuclear power, and the demand for steady-state energy consumption is growing rapidly,” said Tom Evans, ORNL’s lead scientist on the project. “Agreements like this are exactly how we can meet those demands through innovative approaches that accelerate the process by which nuclear power is brought to the grid,” he continued. Inside the process to accelerate nuclear licensingAtomic Canyon has used the Frontier supercomputer to develop novel AI models specifically designed for the nuclear industry, known as FERMI. These FERMI models are equipped with intelligent search capabilities, allowing users to locate relevant documents across mounds of technical documents. Frontier, being the first exascale supercomputer in the world, played a crucial role in this process. Its computing power was vital to train FERMI models on the technical language of the nuclear industry documents. They were trained based on 53 million pages of nuclear documents within the NRC’s ADAMS database – the official record-keeping system that houses the history of every reactor in the United States. The role of Atomic Canyon“Nuclear power is having a moment,” said Trey Lauderdale, CEO of Atomic Canyon. “It is 20 percent of the power in the United States.”“It is a clean source of energy. It works 24/7. So across the United States and really across the world, we’re seeing a resurgence in nuclear power, which is incredibly exciting,” he continued.Speaking to WVLT, Lauderdale also shed light on how they will ensure the technology is reliable and meets all the regulations.“By no means are we saying AI should run a nuclear power plant or make any mission-critical decisions. The first step is organizing data. It’s making it so data is findable. It’s searchable,” Lauderdale said.This collaboration feels like a long-overdue leap for an industry buried in paperwork and complexity. If AI can crack nuclear licensing, it might just redefine what’s possible in regulated sectors.
Atomic Canyon Frontier Supercomputer Nuclear Energy Nuclear Licensing Nuclear Power Plant Nuclear Reactors ORNL
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