The Digital Core: Enabling Nuclear Power’s Future Through an AI-driven Data Ecosystem

With nearly 90 percent of the U.S. nuclear reactors already receiving extensions to operate for 60 years or more, it’s clear the industry continues to shift towards longer operational lifecycles (LTO).

Plant operations face significant changes, especially for asset management, information technology (IT), and capital planning and operations teams that must shift their strategies to support decades of power delivery.

To adapt to the operating extensions, the nuclear industry needs to shift to a data-first approach to inform critical decisions around assets, maintenance, and cost optimization.

Creating an intelligent data ecosystem delivers key insights to predict future health issues, while demonstrating continued safety and reliability through data.

Four Priorities for an Intelligent Data Ecosystem

• Asset Management
  From disparate systems to paper-based filing, the problem isn’t getting enough data about your assets – it’s having access to it in one place to understand real-­time operations and the cause of any issues. Many nuclear plants leverage multiple systems to maintain data about their assets.
  
  Moving to digital asset management records provides a single view into what’s happening across all assets, equipment, and components to inform critical decisions. In doing so, it supports the essential shift from reactive to predictive maintenance. Extending the lifespan of nuclear plants requires insight into previous maintenance activities to inform future actions.
• Regulatory Compliance
  A strong data governance policy informs the organization of critical information for maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements, like maintenance records and safety protocols.
  
  For nuclear plants extending their operational life, a strong data governance policy helps to inform critical decisions by providing essential insights into what’s happened across the life of the plant. This sits at the core of a plant’s IT infrastructure – and can provide essential insights into assets, maintenance priorities, and capital investments.
• Operational Excellence
  Minimizing risk while maximizing safety sits at the core for any nuclear operations – and having a strong data ecosystem with integrated, intelligent data helps to inform key decisions.
  
  Equipment reliability starts with a strong maintenance strategy, which can be supported and executed via digital asset management plans and a shift towards more predictive maintenance activities. Whether its knowing the details of upcoming maintenance or effectively managing project priorities, a holistic view into data across the plant and its operations can help drive efficiencies, productivity, and reliability.
• Capital Planning
  A shift in operating lifespan changes how capital plans are developed and executed. With access to more data within the data ecosystem, it can provide a clearer view into asset records and maintenance – helping to prioritize capital investments and project timelines.
  
  Streamlining data collection and creating automated processes to identify how to rank, prioritize, and execute capital plans can ensure the biggest priority items receive the most focus. And, by giving stakeholders a clear view into the long-range capital planning process, it can help to optimize costs across the plant now and in the future.

The Role of AI in Today’s Data Ecosystem

Advanced analytics powered by data science technologies can provide deep insights into these issues, helping to enable smarter and faster decision making.

From data visualization to machine learning and generative AI, teams can drive increased automation and efficiency by leveraging existing data to solve big challenges. And, it can all be integrated with your existing workflows for seamless operation.