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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.
T. J. Dolan, K. Yamazaki, A. Sagara
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 60-72
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A599
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Physics-Engineering-Cost (PEC) code has been updated to include blanket-shield design data, a new cost structure, new unit costs, and improved algorithms. It is used here to estimate component masses and costs for heliotron reactors, which have continuous helical coils like the Large Helical Device.Relative to a "base case," we study how the cost of electricity (COE) varies with various parameters: central electron temperature, coil width/depth ratio, plasma-coil distance, plasma profile shapes, beta, maximum magnetic field, neutron wall load, net power output, plasma impurity content, plasma aspect ratio, and blanket lifetime.The COE decreases strongly with increasing beta but tends to level out at beta values >6%. At a fixed output power, higher beta values make the reactor smaller, which decreases the energy confinement time, making ignition more difficult. The resulting COE estimates are compared with that of the Stellarator Power Plant Study.