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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.
K. Lisa Reed, Farzad Rahnema, Dingkang Zhang, Dan Ilas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1686-1697
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1757962
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, a set of stylized numerical benchmark problems is developed. These problems are based on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory preconceptual design of a fluoride-salt-cooled small modular advanced high-temperature reactor, or SmAHTR, that uses prismatic fuel assemblies with cylindrical pins/rods containing tri-isotropic fuel particles. A detailed description of the benchmark problems is achieved by closing several outstanding design gaps and modifying the coolant channel shape to reduce bypass flow for improved coolant and fuel temperature distributions. The benchmark problems, while stylized, retain the important thermal-hydraulic and reactor physics features (e.g., fuel particles) necessary for benchmarking tools for reactor core analysis.
In addition to the full description, detailed reference results such as the eigenvalue (keff) and fuel pin and assembly-averaged fission density distributions are provided for five benchmark problems: full-length fuel assemblies with control rods fully withdrawn and inserted, and full core with all control rods withdrawn, all control rods fully inserted, and some control rods fully inserted (near-critical core). The provided results are calculated using the continuous-energy Monte Carlo code MCNP.