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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.
A. Abdelghafar Galahom
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 6 | June 2019 | Pages 638-651
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1560757
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work presents a comparison between the homogeneous and heterogeneous [seed-blanket (SB)] fuel assembly used in the VVER-1200 core. The MCNPX 2.7 code with the ENDF/B-VII.0 data library was used to investigate the possible advantages that can be achieved when the SB assembly is used instead of homogeneous assembly. Thorium-232 was used as a fertile material in the blanket region and different fissile materials were investigated in the seed region. The neutronic characteristics of the presented designs were investigated by comparing four different combinations of fissile materials with (Th,U)O2 that were distributed uniformly through the whole assembly. The radial power distribution was investigated in both homogeneous and SB assemblies. The power distribution is flatter in the homogeneous assembly than the heterogeneous assembly. The suggested fuels in the SB assembly achieved a longer fuel cycle than the homogeneous assembly. Neutronic parameters related to reactor safety operation, such as control rod worth, Doppler reactivity coefficient, and effective delayed neutron fraction βeff have been investigated for the suggested fuel types. The SB assembly achieved a higher conversion ratio than the homogeneous assembly. Therefore, the fissile inventory ratio decreased more slowly with burnup in the case of SB than in the homogeneous assembly. Using 232Th instead of 238U reduced the production of the plutonium and the transuranic atoms.
