Project

Advancing AI for nuclear energy through Prometheus

"Prometheus... a platform for autonomously deployed and operated nuclear power plants" logo

Building an integrated artificial intelligence platform for faster nuclear energy deployment

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a leading partner in development of Prometheus, an integrated artificial intelligence platform designed to accelerate nuclear energy development.

The Prometheus platform was selected to support the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, which brings together national laboratories, universities and other partners to apply advanced artificial intelligence to major scientific and energy challenges. 

ORNL will contribute expertise, facilities and technical capabilities spanning artificial intelligence, nuclear science, advanced manufacturing and data management. 

Addressing barriers to nuclear energy deployment

America needs substantial new nuclear generating capacity to meet rising electricity demand while strengthening energy security and reliability. 

By streamlining the nuclear industry’s fragmented processes into connected workflows, Prometheus aims to establish the technical evidence to support an industrywide goal of reducing deployment timelines and operating costs by 50 percent.
 

How the Prometheus Platform works

ORNL will help develop and deliver the Prometheus Platform and connect it with the American Science Cloud.
The platform will provide:
A common interface
Prometheus’ specialized AI agents will work together across nuclear design, analysis, licensing, manufacturing, construction and operations.
A persistent digital thread
Prometheus will maintain connections among requirements, models, analyses and records throughout a project.
A continuously improving nuclear knowledge base
Prometheus will ingest and organize DOE’s legacy nuclear information. The knowledge base will also be augmented by information generated through platform workflows, creating a growing technical resource for future tasks.
A governed and traceable framework.
The platform will connect AI-supported activities within a unified framework designed to preserve traceability, technical rigor and appropriate oversight.

ORNL’s Contributions

AI-generated image showing a robotic arm manufacturing a nuclear component beside digital construction models.

Advancing nuclear manufacturing and construction

ORNL will lead work on AI-enabled manufacturing and construction workflows, drawing on the capabilities of the laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility.

The project plans to demonstrate at least 10 AI-enabled workflows covering activities from agent-supported component fabrication to machine-executable construction verification. The goal is to translate qualified nuclear designs into physical components, systems and facilities more efficiently.
AI-generated image showing a nuclear facility with digital modeling, simulation and licensing data overlays.

Accelerating design and licensing

ORNL will support development of Prometheus’ AI-enabled workflows for nuclear reactor design and licensing. The platform will leverage an expansive and comprehensive modeling and simulation toolkit developed at DOE national laboratories, industry partners, and academia for both reactor systems design and balance-of-plant design.

Prometheus will also incorporate confirmatory safety analysis to both inform the design optimization under accident scenarios and automate the licensing documentation necessary for regulatory approval.
AI-generated image showing a nuclear plant connected to digital models, data dashboards and AI-driven operations.

Accelerating autonomous operations

ORNL will support development of Prometheus’ AI-enabled workflows for autonomous nuclear operations. The platform will coordinate agents using real-time data on equipment health and plant capacity constraints.

With Prometheus partners, ORNL will support integration of diagnostics, prognostics, decision-making, and control in a coordinated and secure manner, with the objective being to improve plant availability and performance while reducing staffing requirements without compromising safety or reliability.
AI-generated image showing archived nuclear documents being scanned and converted into digital data.

Making legacy nuclear information more useful

ORNL maintains extensive collections of historical nuclear documents and technical data. Much of this information was created before modern digital data practices and can be difficult to search, classify and reuse.

Along with Prometheus partners, ORNL will curate legacy nuclear documents and develop AI-assisted methods to classify their contents. This effort will strengthen the Prometheus knowledge base and help researchers and engineers apply decades of nuclear experience to current deployment challenges.

 

Supporting secure, reliable and affordable energy

Prometheus combines ORNL’s capabilities in nuclear energy, high-performance computing and advanced manufacturing to solve some of the biggest challenges in nuclear energy deployment. 

By accelerating the transition from research and design to construction and operation, ORNL’s contributions will support DOE’s efforts to expand secure, reliable and affordable nuclear energy. 

 

The images used to represent ORNL's contributions were created with the assistance of AI.


 

Learn more about Prometheus