The Department of Energy’s $8-billion-plus nuclear cleanup branch is getting positive results from its early forays into artificial intelligence and machine learning, Jeff Avery told a National Academies panel Tuesday.
New technology is playing a growing role at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, Jeff Avery told the National Academies Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.
“We have recently begun exploring the promising capabilities of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning … to ultimately reduce our environmental liability and assure safe cleanup operations,” Avery said.
The new technology has allowed Environmental Management to identify trends and patterns that otherwise would have been “hidden” amid groundwater data results, Avery said. Artificial intelligence has helped to “inform” cleanup of mercury vapors at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and coal ash basins at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, he added.