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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.
C. E. Kessel, F. M. Poli, K. Ghantous, N. N. Gorelenkov, M. E. Rensink, T. D. Rognlien, P. B. Snyder, H. St. John, A. D. Turnbull
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 75-106
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The advanced physics and advanced technology tokamak power plant ARIES-ACT1 has a major radius of 6.25 m at an aspect ratio of 4.0, toroidal field of 6.0 T, strong shaping with elongation of 2.2, and triangularity of 0.63. The broadest pressure cases reached wall-stabilized βN ∼ 5.75, limited by n = 3 external kink mode requiring a conducting shell at b/a = 0.3, requiring plasma rotation, feedback, and/or kinetic stabilization. The medium pressure peaking case reaches βN = 5.28 with BT = 6.75, while the peaked pressure case reaches βN < 5.15. Fast particle magnetohydrodynamic stability shows that the alpha particles are unstable, but this leads to redistribution to larger minor radius rather than loss from the plasma. Edge and divertor plasma modeling shows that 75% of the power to the divertor can be radiated with an ITER-like divertor geometry, while >95% can be radiated in a stable detached mode with an orthogonal target and wide slot geometry. The bootstrap current fraction is 91% with a q95 of 4.5, requiring ∼1.1 MA of external current drive. This current is supplied with 5 MW of ion cyclotron radio frequency/fast wave and 40 MW of lower hybrid current drive. Electron cyclotron is most effective for safety factor control over ρ ∼ 0.2 to 0.6 with 20 MW. The pedestal density is ∼0.9×1020/m3, and the temperature is ∼4.4 keV. The H98 factor is 1.65, n/nGr = 1.0, and the ratio of net power to threshold power is 2.8 to 3.0 in the flattop.