The Energy Department’s Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory and artificial intelligence (AI) company Atomic Canyon are teaming to streamline the licensing process for nuclear power plants, a complex and time-consuming slog under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
As demand for power in the U.S. soars and hyperscalers seek new electrons for AI data centers, the partnership should expand Atomic Canyon’s business that has focused on helping owners of existing reactors use AI for regulatory compliance.
The plan is to “use high-performance computing to create high-fidelity simulations that ensure the safety of designs while accelerating licensing with artificial intelligence to automate aspects of the review process,” the Tennessee lab and company said.
Leveraging ORNL’s Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, Atomic Canyon developed novel AI models for the nuclear industry called FERMI, which powers Atomic Canyon’s Neutron AI platform. FERMI models allow intelligent search capabilities that let users quickly locate relevant documents across vast repositories of technical documentation.
“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,” ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer said in a statement. “The time is now. With new capabilities enabled by AI and partners like Atomic Canyon, we can help the nuclear industry unleash American energy.”
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) roots stretch to the Manhattan Project. It is home to the Energy Department’s Office of Science user facilities that include the High Flux Isotope Reactor and other leading properties for applied energy sciences.
The accord enables Atomic Canyon to develop Neutron Enterprise, a proprietary version of its Neutron AI platform, with enhanced cybersecurity features to protect sensitive nuclear information.
The Trump administration is attempting to truncate deployment of new plants, including small modular reactors (SMRs) and gigawatt-scale units. A recent executive order from the president gives the NRC 18 months to reach final decisions on applications to build and operate new reactors.
The nuclear industry is highly regulated to ensure the safety and reliability of every nuclear reactor in the U.S. NRC’s oversight often requires vast amounts of research and reporting. What AI brings is the potential to streamline reporting requirements and accelerate licensing and regulatory compliance processes.
“The NRC and the industry at large is going to need a lot of help to make it so they can hit those deadlines, and our view is artificial intelligence is going to play a key role in enabling that,” Atomic Canyon CEO Trey Lauderdale tells Axios.
The collaboration is the latest in a series of energy-tech partnerships intended to harness the power of AI to help with regulations for current and future nuclear reactors.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Westinghouse are working together to make building Westinghouse reactors an “efficient, repeatable process,” while the Department of Energy’s National Lab plans to use a tool from Microsoft Corp. to create safety and analysis reports that are part of construction and license applications, the organizations said.
