News

This past week, notification was received from the Department of Energy that USA’s “Advanced Remote Monitoring Project,” has been approved for full-scale implementation. This multi-million-dollar grant award was funded through the Office of Nuclear Energy’s Advanced Reactor Development Projects pathway, which gives funds for concepts and ideas that could improve the capabilities and commercialization potential of advanced reactor designs and technology.

This three-year project, originally born in response to the Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative, promotes a vision that preserving the competitiveness of our nation’s nuclear energy supply can be achieved through the application of advanced technologies. Participating USA members working alongside national laboratories, academic researchers and leading technologists will research, develop and deploy advanced monitoring solutions across a number of their facilities. This will enable automation of data collection, analytics and anomalies detection through intelligent machine learning algorithms. Also, on tap to be demonstrated is the potential value of real-time operations support through 24×7 remote monitoring and diagnostic services.

The above work products are to be integrated into a standardized and scalable technology platform that going forward, can further enable modernization of work practices, approaches to regulatory compliance and sharing of operating experience.

USA’s Director of Fleet Modernization, Clinton Carter, remarked that: “USA is very excited to have received this grant and we look forward to building-out these new capabilities for the ultimate benefit of all USA members as well as the larger nuclear industry.”

USA’s President and CEO, John Christensen, also commented: “This milestone is the result of a nearly five-year effort and I congratulate the project team for their persistence and dedication. USA is honored to have been selected by DOE to provide industry leadership as we work to modernize plant processes and ultimately preserve the economic competitiveness of our nation’s nuclear energy supply.”