Atomic Show #334 – Jonathan Nistor, COO Blue Wave AI Labs

Blue Wave AI Labs has been creating and supplying artificial intelligence tools – mainly in the form of machine learning – to operating nuclear power plants since 2016. Their initial set of tools focused on improving boiling water reactor core reload designs.

The company was formed to address the chosen problem because it was a time consuming – aka expensive – data-driven task with a large number of variables, each with a significant amount of uncertainty that was mitigated by inserting large margins. Though operating with those large margins provided safety and operational reliability, the extra margins led to increased costs/reduced revenues in the form of higher than necessary enrichments, shorter refueling cycles and/or operating at a lower than rated power.

Jonathan Nistor is Blue Wave AI’s chief operating officer and one of its early employees. During his visit to the Atomic Show he provided a lot of deep technical details about addressing the challenges of designing BWR core reloads and also provided some insights into new directions that AI (artificial intelligence, not to be confused with Atomic Insights) can take to improve the operating efficiency of nuclear power plants.

We also talked extensively about the potential for AI to address difficult and time consuming documentation and review tasks that require reliable access to cited reference material, a comprehensive understanding of plant license basis and the requirements associated with license applications for both changes to operating reactors and initial license applications for new, advanced reactors.

We talked about the way that suppliers like Blue Wave AI meet the requirements for cyber security and how they protect their clients’s data for both security and proprietary reasons.

We also discussed the current state of acceptance for AI tools from the point of view of nuclear licensees and the regulators that oversee the industry.

This episode is a bit more technical than usual, so it should appeal to the hardcore geeks in the audience. But it’s also accessible to anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the challenges facing the operating fleet and the assistance that the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence can provide.

It’s important to point out that the nuclear industry is interested in AI tools that help humans do their job better, not in tools that result in machines driven by codes to make decisions that humans should be making.

Enjoy the show.