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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.
John R. Weeks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | March 1976 | Pages 348-355
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31517
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The lnconel-600 tubing in operating pressurized water reactor (PWR) steam generators has developed leaks due to intergranular stress corrosion cracking or a general wastage attack, originating from the secondary side of the tubing. Corrosion has been limited to those areas of the steam generators where limited secondary coolant circulation and high heat flux have caused impurities to concentrate. Wastage or pitting attack has always been associated with local concentration of sodium hydrogen phosphates, whereas stress corrosion has been associated with local concentration of sodium or potassium hydroxides. The only instance of stress corrosion originating from the primary side occurred on cold-worked tubing when hydrogen was not added to getter oxygen, and LiOH was not added to raise the pH of the primary coolant. All U.S. PWR manufacturers are now recommending an all-volatile treatment of the secondary coolant, whereas many plants operated until recently using a phosphate treatment. Experience in operating plants has shown, however, that removal of phosphate-rich sludge deposits is difficult, and that further wastage and/or intergranular stress corrosion can develop; the residual sodium phosphates gradually convert by reaction with corrosion product hydroxides to sodium hydroxide, which remains concentrated in the limited flow areas. Improvements in circulation patterns have been achieved by inserting flow baffles in some PWR steam generators. Inservice monitoring by eddy current techniques, as recommended in U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Guide 1.83, is useful for detecting corrosion-induced defects in the tubing, but irreproducibility in field examinations can lead to uncertainties in interpreting the results.