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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
George Emanuel*
Nuclear Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | December 1980 | Pages 238-243
Technical Paper | Argonne National Laboratory Specialists’ Workshop on Basic Research Needs for Nuclear Waste Management / Isotopes Separation | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of small isotope enrichment cascades that have large separation factors is examined. A quantity called the separative work gain is derived under the assumption of a small inlet assay. This concept simplifies the determination of optimum separation factors, and verifies the common practice of using the same values for these factors for each stage in a cascade. Simple relations are provided for a non-ideal, counter-current cascade of arbitrary size. They are utilized to determine a pricing strategy and to estimate a value for the U.S. stockpile of diffusion plant UF6 tailings. The value depends on the separation factors and cost of separative work, but may well be several billion dollars.