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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Standards Program
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.
Vaibhav Yadav Jason K. Hansen, Shawn St. Germain (INL), Robby Christian (RPI)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 24-38
Economic or financial causes have led to closure or pending early retirement of several US nuclear reactors in the last five years. The published report “Economic and Market Challenges Facing the US Nuclear Commercial Fleet – Cost and Revenue Study” by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) identified 63 of the 79 studied nuclear power plants (NPP) lost money in the year 2016. The revenue-gap analysis (Figure 1) performed in the study also concluded that additional revenue is required to return most of these nuclear power units to profitable operations [1]. This can be achieved by reducing the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs that account for about 70% of the total operating expenditures for an NPP (Figure 2). There are many ways of reducing O&M costs; this work presents an innovative framework of reducing O&M costs by utilizing the onsite FLEX equipment at NPPs.