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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.
L. Chen, W. Zhao, G. Zhong, C. Watts, James P. Gunn, X. Liu, Y. Lian, DLP Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 4 | May 2018 | Pages 568-578
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1415614
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal performance of the divertor Langmuir probe conceptual design developed for the ITER divertor, which consists of a shielded probe bolted to a copper heat sink, has been predicted by the finite element analysis package ANSYS to have a high risk of damage due to poor heat transfer ability. In order to mitigate this risk, three alternative designs focusing on improving heat conduction have been proposed, and the power-handling abilities, damage risk, and interface challenges of the three designs have been compared. First simulation results indicate that a design involving casting a tungsten probe sensor into a copper heat sink could provide adequate heat-handling capacity. Elasto-plastic stress analysis will be needed to evaluate the thermal stresses at W/Cu interface in our future work. Langmuir probe prototypes will be prepared and high heat flux tests will be performed on electron beam facilities at the Southwestern Institute of Physics to verify the probe functionality once analysis has identified a suitable candidate design.