| Affiliations: | STEM Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Thomas DeGuire
tdeguire@tamu.edu Nuclear Engineering |
| Faculty Mentor: | Jean Ragusa, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBA |
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Team Size:
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4
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| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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-learning about nuclear energy, nuclear safeguards, and advanced nuclear reactor technology -learning new skills related to coding, modeling and simulation, and digital twinning -potential for co-authorship on publications |
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Team Needs:
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The following skills are being sought, but are not required: – coding experience, especially with python – nuclear engineering experience – experience in Unity or Unreal Engine – experience meshing 3D geometries – public policy experience – experience with machine learning techniques – experience (or interest) in literature review – knowledge of or experience with development and deployment of digital twin technology in any industry |
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Description:
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Hundreds of nuclear reactors are deployed around the world for the purposes of generating clean energy. However, these reactors, and the nuclear material used to fuel them, could potentially be used to support a nuclear weapons program. Therefore, an international watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was established in 1957 in part to deter and detect the use of nuclear material and facilities for activities other than their declared civilian purpose. The actions taken by the IAEA to monitor nuclear material and facilities are referred to as nuclear safeguards. While a robust system of nuclear safeguards exists today, the safeguards regime has largely focused on a category of nuclear reactors known as light water reactors. Light water reactors are not the only type of nuclear reactor design and, in recent years, a significant amount of work has been undertaken to develop and hopefully deploy nuclear reactors of different designs. These different reactor technologies have many economic and safety characteristics that could lead to an expansion of nuclear power, but the current nuclear safeguards regime may not be prepared to efficiently apply safeguards to next generation reactors. Thus, new safeguards techniques and approaches need to be investigated. One potential technique to develop and apply safeguards is digital twins. IBM defines a digital twin as “a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision making.” This project seeks to support the international safeguards mission and investigate digital twins as a tool for efficiently safeguarding liquid-fueled molten salt reactors, a nuclear reactor design that has recently seen substantial investment.
This project involves several different lines of investigation. These include but are not limited to creating simulations of nuclear reactors to understand how they function from a nuclear safeguards perspective, researching machine learning techniques that can detect anomalies in the data being produced by the nuclear reactor simulations, visualizing the reactor and its data in a game engine such as Unity or Unreal, and linking the visualization with the machine learning and reactor simulation to create the twin of the reactor. Note that this work is in its relatively early stages; some aspects of the project are well defined while others are still being developed. Team members are being sought to work on all aspects of this project, including those still in the developmental phase. Likewise, while this project is primarily an engineering project, nuclear safeguards are deeply connected with public policy. Students with a policy background are also welcome to participate in this work. This research is directly applicable to the expansion of nuclear energy as well as nuclear nonproliferation. |