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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Latest News
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.
V. D’Auria, S. Dulla, P. Ravetto, L. Savoldi, M. Utili, R. Zanino
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 537-543
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291252
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current studies on the development of the EU DEMO breeding blanket include among the options the use of liquid Lithium-Lead (17Li-83Pb) as tritium breeder (and multiplier), with different coolants. As the tritium is steadily produced in the blanket during the reactor operation, suitably efficient strategies for the Tritium Extraction System (TES) from the breeder must be developed, allowing a closed fuel cycle in situ and avoiding tritium accumulation in the machine. The Permeator Against Vacuum (PAV) appears to be one of the most promising solutions to achieve this goal. In this paper, the performance of a PAV system is studied by means of different models describing the transport of tritium in the liquid PbLi and in the metallic membrane separating it from the vacuum. The comparison of the results for different membrane materials and size of the device, for a given target efficiency, allows to optimize the PAV design, also taking into account corrosion issues. The approximations and limitations of the adopted models are also addressed.