The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and a privately-held artificial intelligence company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week to use AI to streamline licensing for new nuclear projects.
The agreement was signed with California-based Atomic Canyon at the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop held in Knoxville, Tenn. July 22-23.
The MOU between ORNL and Atomic Canyon outlines a shared effort “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,” according to ORNL’s July 22 press release.
Atomic Canyon has used ORNL’s exascale supercomputer Frontier to develop novel AI models designed specifically for the nuclear industry called FERMI – presumably named after physicist Enrico Fermi. The FERMI model powers Atomic Canyon’s Neutron AI platform, according to the press release.
ORNL said the FERMI models allow for intelligent search capabilities, which can allow for users to locate relevant documents across large sources of technical documentation in a timely manner.
ORNL’s AI-based MOU with Atomic Canyon came a week after DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) agreed to collaborate with Microsoft to use AI tools to streamline nuclear deployment. INL also agreed to collaborate with Amazon Web Services on July 23 to accelerate nuclear energy projects using AI technologies.
Also, the agreement will allow Atomic Canyon to continue its development of Neutron Enterprise, a proprietary version of their Neutron AI platform. Through the agreement, Neutron Enterprise will additionally have “exclusive capabilities and enhanced cybersecurity features to protect sensitive nuclear information,” ORNL said.
