Startup Offers AI Tool to Access NRC’s ADAMS Library

• Startup Offers AI Tool to Access NRC’s ADAMS Library
• NRC Says TerraPower Construction License Application for Its Advanced Reactor Needs Work
• Google, Microsoft, and Nucor Set Clean Tech Plan
• Romania To Invest in  First SMR Power Plant in 2025
• France Awards Grants for Molten Salt Reactor R&D
• Blue Laser Fusion Ink $37.5M Series Seed Funding Round

Startup Offers AI Tool to Access NRC’s ADAMS Library

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) is a tribute to the proverb that for an agency that has  procedures for just about everything it does with regulated organizations, you can never have too many documents.

In all the NRC has an estimated 50 million plus documents that are online and available to the public via a text based search system.  Everything that a nuclear utility applying for a license, or modifying one, or doing the countless other things that require the agency’s approval, winds up being documented and stored in ADAMS. While some topical technical reports are not available, due to their containing propriety technical information, the vast majority of submissions can be found but often only after multiple rounds of searching and sifting results from the massive DBMS.

Finding things in ADAMS is both a science and an art. Knowing whether you got the right document, or all of the right documents, is a critical success factor when any entity regulated by the NRC is working on a compliance project.

To address this well understood pain point for the nuclear industry, a new nuclear startup called Atomic Canyon has developed a search tool using artificial intelligence to help users of ADAMS get the right information the first time. Appropriately named “Neutron,” the objective of the open source, and for now, a free web based application, is to simplify access to the tens of millions of pages of information.

Atomic Canyon CEO Trey Lauderdale told Neutron Bytes in a phone interview “its all about unlocking workflow efficiency. Our AI is a knowledgeable navigator, making data more accessible and promoting industry knowledge-sharing.”

According to Lauderdale, the firm trained the AI search engine on 52 million pages of documents from publicly accessible data at the NRC.

“What we are doing is knocking the fire hose down to size,” says Lauderdale.

How it all got started

Asked how the firm got into the business of using AI to search ADAMS, Lauderdale said living in San Luis Obispo, CA, the home of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, gave him a sense that nuclear energy is emerging as being increasingly important in dealing with climate change.

With a background in digital records management in the health care field, Lauderdale said that in speaking out in the community with nuclear workers at the Diablo Canyon plant, he realized there are parallels in managing digital information in the health care and nuclear power industries.

“In terms of IT systems, workflows, and prescriptive operating procedures, I had an insight that the successes we had improving usability of very large databases in the health care field could be applied to the nuclear industry using AI.”

Lauderdale comes to the Atomic Canyon startup having built and sold his digital health care company in 2019 for $180 million.  At the time of the sale the firm was reporting $40 million/year in revenues. He says this experience will guide him in developing Atomic Canyon.

He calls the open source AI system a “strategic knowledge integrator” that can be used to search the documents in ADAMS safely and securely.

While Lauderdale does not have a background in nuclear engineering, he said the firm is in the process of hiring expertise in nuclear licensing, engineering, and related capabilities.

For now the system is free to use. Staff at the company will learn how users access the system, see what kinds of searches they use, and assess how successful they are in getting what they look for. Eventually, proprietary uses of the AI system, and enterprise solutions tailored to customer needs, will become the basis for revenue.

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NRC Says TerraPower Construction License Application for Naturium Advanced Reactor Needs Work

Just a week after TerraPower announced plans to break ground in June for its Natrium advanced 345 MW sodium cooled nuclear reactor at Kemmerer, WY, the NRC tossed a bucket of cold water on the company’s ambitions. Reuters reports that the NRC told the firm this week its planned construction permit application for a high-tech reactor needs more work. Critics of the plants pounced on the news.

On March 19the the NRC sent TerraPower a 45-page overview of a “pre-application readiness assessment” of safety and environmental issues for the reactor. TerraPower had asked NRC for the assessment ahead of its construction permit application. The document is a “pre-application readiness assessment” of safety and environmental issues for the reactor. TerraPower asked NRC to undertake the assessment ahead of its construction permit application. Note to readers: the 45 page document is available in NRC ADAMS at ML24060A227

According to Reuters and the NRC document, agency told TerraPower that the company made several references to technical and licensing reports that its staff has not yet reviewed or that are currently under review. In other words, the firm had gotten ahead of the NRC’s headlights and the agency needed to catch up before signing off.

“References to reports for which the reviews have not yet been completed represents a potential (construction permit) application review schedule risk,” the NRC said in is cover letter.

Critics Take Aim at Natrium

According to Reuters, critics of the project wasted no time in airing their take on the NRC’s letter.

“The NRC review shows that the Natrium construction permit application is simply not ready for prime time,” said Edwin Lyman, a physicist and nuclear power safety advocate at the Union of Concerned Scientists nonprofit group.

“TerraPower should take the time to produce a complete, high-quality application. Otherwise, the Wyoming project is likely to encounter costly delays,” Lyman said.

TerraPower Confident of Progress on the Construction Permit Application

TerraPower said in a statement to the wire service the NRC’s review is not a serious setback for the $4 billion project. The firm added that the readiness assessment was a tool to evaluate the completeness of its forthcoming construction permit application and that its timeline is on track.

“TerraPower will be the first company to submit a commercial advanced nuclear power reactor to the NRC and we feel confident in our timeline to submit this application to the NRC this month.”

The spokesperson added that “the NRC states in the letter their confidence that TerraPower can supply additional information where needed in the official construction permit application.”

Separately, TerraPower delayed the startup of the Natrium reactor by at least two years to 2030 due to a lack of high assay low enriched uranium, or HALEU. TerraPower and Centrus Energy Corp are working to establishing reliable fuel services for HALEU deliveries by 2030.

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Google, Microsoft, and Nucor Set Clean Tech Plan

• The companies will work to address barriers to early-stage commercial project deployment.

Google, Microsoft, and Nucor Corp announced they will work together across the electricity ecosystem to develop new business models and aggregate their demand for advanced clean electricity technologies. These models will be designed to accelerate the development of first-of-a-kind (FOAK) and early commercial projects, including advanced nuclear, next-generation geothermal, clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage, and other applications of clean energy.

Google and Microsoft are arch competitors for development of artificial intelligence. However, what they have in common are huge needs for energy to power the hyperscale data centers needed to deploy the technology to customers. These data centers have huge heat loads which lead to operational and sustainability problems for both firms which operate these data centers on a global basis.

Nucor has steel mills which are huge users of fossil fuels and electricity to make finished steel products at multiple sites throughout the US.

As a first step, the companies will issue an RFI in several US regions for potential projects to encourage technology providers, developers, investors, utilities and others interested in responding to it.  Developers can access the RFI documents here.

The initial RFI is open until April 12th. The companies will complete the first round of power purchase agreements (PPAs) around Q1 2025.

A key set of 14 success factors for project evaluation criteria are clustered around the concept of  technology maturity.  Briefly, it is defined as first-of-a-kind technology that has been successfully demonstrated outside of a lab setting but is not widely commercialized; projects that can at least 50MW of dispatchable power that is carbon-free or generate less than 100g CO2e/kWh. It must be initially located within the United States, with a preference for projects in PJM and can go live by 2030, and have a pathway to becoming cost competitive with existing power sources and potential to scale technology to 100 GW+ of total deployments globally by 2040.

The companies will initially focus on proving out the demand aggregation and procurement model through advanced technology pilot projects in the United States. The companies will pilot a project delivery framework focused on three enabling levers for early commercial projects:

• Signing offtake agreements for technologies that are still early on the cost curve,
• Bringing a clear customer voice to policymakers and other stakeholders on broader long-term ecosystem improvements, and
• Developing new enabling tariff structures in partnership with energy providers and utilities.

In addition to supporting innovative technologies that can help decarbonize electricity systems worldwide, the RFI says this demand aggregation model will bring clear benefits to large energy buyers. Pooling demand enables buyers to offtake larger volumes of carbon-free electricity from a portfolio of plants, reducing project-specific development risk, and enables procurement efficiencies and shared learnings.

To ensure that the project delivery framework that they develop is transparent and scalable, Google, Microsoft, and Nucor will share their lessons learned and the roadmap from their first pilot projects, and encourage other companies to consider how they can also support advanced clean electricity projects.

It isn’t clear how cost sharing for projects will work and, perhaps more importantly, how intellectual property rights will be allocated among partners. It is likely firms signing on to participate in a future RFP will be looking for answers to these questions.

World Nuclear News cited early examples of actions by the firms  issuing the RFI prior to the announcement include;

In May 2023 Nucor signed an MOU with NuScale Power to explore the deploying NuScale’s small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) power plants at Nucor’s scrap-based Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel mills. In addition, NuScale is studying the feasibility of siting a manufacturing facility for NuScale Power Modules near a Nucor facility. In April 2022, Nucor committed to a $15 million private investment in public equity in NuScale Power.

In 2022 Constellation Energy announced it was collaborating with Microsoft on the development of an energy matching technology using real-time, data-driven carbon accounting solution and hour-by-hour regional tracking to match customer needs with local carbon-free energy sources. Last year, Microsoft agreed a new hourly energy-matching agreement with Constellation that harnesses the environmental attributes of nuclear to put the data center in Boydton, Virginia “very close” to the goal of 100% carbon-free operation.

Microsoft has also signed an agreement with fusion energy developer Helion Energy for the provision of electricity from its first fusion power plant. Separately, Nucor and Helion signed a collaboration to build a 500 MWe fusion power plant.

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Romania To Invest in  First SMR Power Plant in 2025

• NuScale nuclear reactor planned for former coal site at Doicesti

(NucNet) Romania expects to make a preliminary investment decision next year on whether to build a small modular reactor plant, which could become Europe’s first project using the technology. Romania has chosen a former coal plant site at Doicesti in central Romania, about 100 miles northwest of Bucharest,  for the deployment of a 462MW Voygr-6 SMR plant. Each SMR will generate 77 MWe.

Press reports quoted the US ambassador to Romania, Kathleen Ann Kavalec, who also toured the site, as saying that the Romanian project could benefit from US financial support worth $4 billion. The Biden administration has already announced early stage funding of up to $275 million for the Doicesti SMR.

In May 2022, NuScale signed an agreement with Nuclearelectrica to conduct engineering studies, technical reviews, and licensing activities at Doicesti.

State-owned nuclear power company Nuclearelectrica said in 2021 it will partner with US company NuScale Power to build SMR reactors by 2029 as part of its efforts to boost low-emission power sources.

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France Awards Grants for Molten Salt Reactor R&D

(WNN) Molten salt reactor developers Thorizon and Stellaria, both in consortium with Orano, have been selected by the French government to receive funding through the France 2030 national investment plan.

Thorizon of the Netherlands has now announced that it is being granted EUR10 million in funding under France 2030.

Thorizon is a spin-off from NRG, which operates the High Flux Reactor in Petten. It is developing a 250 MWt/100 MWe molten salt reactor (MSR), targeted at large industrial customers and utilities. Thorizon aims to construct a pilot reactor system before 2035.

MSRs use molten fluoride salts as primary coolant at low pressure. The design may operate with epithermal or fast neutron spectrums, and with a variety of fuels. Much of the interest today in reviving the MSR concept relates to using thorium (to breed fissile uranium-233), where an initial source of fissile material such as plutonium-239 needs to be provided. The molten salt fuel adopted by Thorizon uses a combination of long-lived elements from reprocessed used nuclear fuel and thorium. The firm said the reactor will be able to recycle long-lived waste from existing nuclear facilities.

In addition to Orano, and French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), two research institutes in Lille, French consultancy firm Oakridge, the engineering company Tractebel, NRG-Pallas in Petten, and Differ in Eindhoven are also part of the project.

Last month, Thorizon announced it had signed a strategic partnership agreement with French ultra-compact molten salt fast neutron reactor developer Naarea to advance the development of MSRs in Europe.

French chloride molten salt reactor developer Stellaria, a spin-off from the CEA, has also announced funding from France 2030. The reactor proposed by Stellaria and its partners CEA, Technip Energies and Schneider Electric will be very compact, measuring 4 cubic metres, and will be able to use a diversified range of nuclear fuels (uranium, plutonium, MOX, minor actinides, even thorium).

The reactor, which Stellaria says is “the world’s first fast neutron reactor capable of renewing 100% of its fuel in its core during operation” will produce 250 MWt/110 MWe. Together with its partners, Stellaria aims to commission its first reactor in 2033, and series reactors as early as 2035.

Launched by President Emmanuel Macron in October 2021, the France 2030 re-industrialization plan is endowed with EUR54 billion (USD58 billion) in funding schemes to be deployed over five years. In February 2022, Macron said EUR1 billion will be made available through the plan for France’s Nuward small modular reactor (SMR) project and “innovative reactors to close the fuel cycle and produce less waste”. He said he had set “an ambitious goal” to construct a first prototype of the Nuward SMR in France by 2030.

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Blue Laser Fusion Ink $37.5M Series Seed Funding Round

Blue Laser Fusion Inc. (BLF) successfully closed its $37.5 million Series Seed funding round with investment from strategic partners SoftBank Corp., a major Japan-based telecommunication and IT operator, a private investor Yusaku Maezawa through the Maezawa Fund, and Itochu Corporation, one of world’s largest trading companies. These new investors joined the round with venture capitalists, JAFCO Group Co., Ltd., SPARX Group Co., Ltd (Mirai Creation Fund III), and Waseda University Ventures.

BLF was founded in 2022 by Shuji Nakamura, Ph.D, 2014 Nobel Laureate in Physics and Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Hiroaki Ohta, Ph.D, General Partner of Waseda University Ventures (WUV), and Richard Ogawa, a Silicon Valley attorney.

The company developed a proprietary novel laser fusion technology capable of achieving the world’s first fusion for energy generation for power grids. BLF’s technology enables a high efficiency Mega Joule pulse energy laser with a fast repetition rate coupled with a high gain, aneutronic solid target to achieve commercial fusion. BLF plans to complete its first prototype in 2025, and demonstrate a commercial-ready fusion reactor by 2030.

CEO of Blue Laser Fusion, Shuji Nakamura commented, “As we work to commercialize our innovative fusion technology to achieve our vision of a future powered by clean, limitless energy, we are proud to announce that SoftBank Corp., the Maezawa Fund, and Itochu Corporation are becoming shareholders of Blue Laser Fusion. We look forward to working with these world-renowned companies and strategic investors to deliver clean, on-demand renewable energy to the world.”

“We are thrilled to be part of the journey with Blue Laser Fusion,” said Akihiko Nakano, Vice President and Head of the Green Transformation Promotion Division at SoftBank Corp. He further emphasized, “As electricity demand for data centers are expected to increase rapidly due to the spread of AI, we hope to utilize CO2-free clean energy generated by Blue Laser Fusion’s unique and innovative laser technology, and realize a decarbonized society.”

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