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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.
Yecheng Yu, Ping Tan, Yinjie Lin, Yuying Hu, Huidong Guo, Hao Lei, Zhongqi Zhang, Jiadong Li, Delin Hu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 2 | February 2021 | Pages 299-315
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1747839
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A proton therapy facility based on an isochronous superconducting cyclotron is under constructed at the Proton Therapy Facility of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Due to the limitation of minimum energy extracted by the energy selection system in the upstream beamline, a range shifter is installed at the end of the nozzle to further decrease the proton beam energy so that the shallow-seated tumors can be treated. In this paper, the physical structure, energy degradation scheme, and material optimization selection of the range shifter are discussed and analyzed by Monte Carlo simulation software Geant4 and FLUKA. At the same time, the treatment outcome on the energy degradation process and its influence on the synthesis of spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) in the treatment plan system after the application of the range shifter are analyzed. The results show that by using a high-density polyethylene energy-degrading plate with a thickness of 42.35 mm, combined with two 30-mm copper collimators, the range shifter can achieve a good energy-degradation effect while significantly reducing the beam horizontal penumbra at the edge of the radiation field. At the same time, the addition of the range shifter can reduce the number of the energy level required to form the SOBP and shorten the treatment time, but it will inevitably lead to a slight increase in the longitudinal penumbra.