Working to automate nuclear plant operations

<p>For nuclear to be considered as a viable clean energy source, it has to be competitively priced and economical to produce. </p><p>Lauren Fortier, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is helping the cause by developing remote operation protocols for autonomous control of nuclear plants. </p><p>After an undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University — Fortier attended on an ROTC scholarship — she supervised nuclear plant operations on a U.S. aircraft carrier deep in the South China Sea. “It was a unique experience that you don’t easily see anywhere else, especially the complete reliance on nuclear power. The only way you’re moving through the ocean is if you have that nuclear reactor working,” she says.</p><p>Working as a naval nuclear operator, Fortier fell in love with the operations aspects of it all, learning the science behind plant operations. She also became more aware of process shortcomings. Fortier noticed many plant operations were extremely manually intensive, and wondered if they could be less so.</p><p><strong>Moving from operations to academia</strong></p><p>At around the time she was mulling these ideas, the Navy offered Fortier an opportunity to pursue a master’s degree from a list of approved disciplines. Fortier opted for nuclear engineering at MIT as an extension of her work. “My experiences in nuclear up until then had been overwhelmingly positive, so I thought I would build on them and move from the operations realm to the academic realm,” Fortier says. The intense training with the Navy prepared her for the academic rigor at MIT.</p><p>For her master’s degree, Fortier developed a supervisory control system for the operation of nuclear plants. She worked with a simulator that had a strong thermal hydraulic response. The assumption was that lessons learned from the simulations would translate to real-world equivalents.</p><p><strong>In pursuit of autonomous nuclear plant operations</strong></p><p>It turns out the research for the master’s was just the tip of the iceberg. There was still work left to be done.</p><p>For the future viability of nuclear power, small plants, located in rural areas, are a distinct possibility. Thus far, operations conducted in legacy plants have involved intensive manual operations, which are viable because these facilities operate at 100 percent capacity and the power delivered can justify the costs of maintaining a large staff. But microreactors distributed at scale and in remote areas can’t afford a large bench of human talent. It’s where supervised and thoroughly vetted autonomous operations will help.</p><p>A primary question was: “How do we transition to autonomous operations in nuclear power plants?” Fortier wanted one integrated approach, a central supervisory control system instead of many interlinked parts. While a legitimate requirement, the challenge here was in modifying operations that were primarily meant for humans to now also include machines.</p><p>Fortier realized that no matter how thorough the framework for a supervisory control system, its scope would be severely limited if its rigidity couldn’t accommodate both humans and machines. “Because everything is human-centric, it doesn’t allow you to choose the best way to do a procedure,” Fortier observes. What if, instead, humans and computers could tag-team and do what each does best, with strategic human intervention only delivered as necessary?</p><p><strong>MIT-facilitated collaborations</strong></p><p>The goal was elegant, but its scope extended far beyond a master’s thesis. A doctorate seemed like a natural progression, so Fortier has continued her research toward a PhD after completing her master’s in 2025.</p><p>It was in pursuit of autonomous operations that Fortier discovered the power of collaborations at MIT. Her research advisor, Sacit Cetiner, has a joint appointment with MIT NSE and the Idaho National La