News

The nuclear industry has begun comprehensive efforts to strengthen its resiliency. Resiliency is the ability to withstand and reduce the impact of disruptive external threats through planning and preparation, which enables the capability to anticipate, absorb and respond, rapidly recover, and adapt from such an event. USA in 2024 worked to improve resiliency related to natural threats using guidance developed by INPO. All USA facilities got climate projections looking out decades from now to enable planning and preparation. Next steps include completing our climate assessments, conducting assessments for cyber and physical security as well as indirect threats. By the end of 2025 we will have completed assessments in all these areas and will be working on any identified improvements.

Also, next year USA will have four accreditation renewals. Due to the Continuum and an effort to more continuously look at these programs, these reviews will generally be a wrap up of work conducted in the years and months prior.  In fact, INPO and the industry are looking at further consolidating these reviews. An enabler for this further work is new Training performance indicators. USA led the development of new indicators, and these will be piloted through the first part of 2025. It is expected that INPO and industry will further consolidate training reviews in 2026.

Also looking forward, all USA facilities are evaluating various uses of artificial intelligence. Use cases across the industry are growing and use of AI is likely to significantly increase each year going forward. To enable this growth in use, USA took a lead effort with NEI to promote frameworks with NRC.  In addition, NRC recognizes the potential of this technology and has a multi-year effort in progress to build their capacity including working with regulators in Canada and the UK.