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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
H. Streckert, K. Blobaum, B. Chen, J. E. Fair, N. Hein, A. Nikroo, K. Quan, M. Stadermann
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 213-217
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-TFM20-18
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Depleted uranium (DU) hohlraums consist of a sputter-deposited DU layer sandwiched between two sputter-deposited layers of gold and overcoated with a thick electrodeposited gold layer. Production of a multilayered system of dissimilar materials to tight tolerances requires a complex set of process steps. Process drift in production of DU hohlraums resulted in increased failures and led to unacceptably low production yields. Characterization of this failure mechanism indicated poor adhesion between dissimilar layers. Failure of one layer could be traced to the preceding layer. Ultimately, failures were traced to pretreatment of the mandrel for the initial deposition. Pretreatment of the mandrel involves an ion-etch step, which had drifted. Maintenance of the ion gun resulted in improved mandrels and improved process yields. Production yields from the DU sputter deposition were low with failures due to blistering and delamination. Oxidation of the DU due to gettering of residual oxygen or water in the sputter chamber was hypothesized. A process change was implemented to minimize the time between the DU and gold coatings. The change required removal of one production part to incorporate one additional gold sputter source. The production run was thus reduced from five parts to four parts. However, the production yield increased significantly, by 30%.