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Conference Spotlight
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.
David A. Greene
Nuclear Technology | Volume 14 | Number 3 | June 1972 | Pages 218-231
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A31111
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer code has been written to predict pressure on the shell side of a steam generator during a large scale sodium-water reaction. A typical pressure transient has two main features. An initial pressure spike is followed by a secondary pressure pulse whose amplitude is a function of the inertia forces governing the growth of the hydrogen bubble. Unlike the primary pressure spike which lasts a very short time, the secondary pulse can last for a long time and must be considered a steady-state pressure acting on the shell. Rupture disks under sodium may not provide an effective means of relieving the secondary pressure pulse unless the sodium-water reaction occurs close enough to the disk to cause its rapid failure. It is concluded that both superheater and evaporator units of a reference steam generator design can withstand the pressure transient associated with the sodium-water reaction resulting from a guillotine failure of a single heat transfer tube.