Westinghouse Electric Company and Google Cloud on July 15 announced they are collaborating to use artificial intelligence tools to transform the construction of advanced Westinghouse nuclear reactors into an efficient, repeatable process and to enhance the operations of existing nuclear power plants using data-driven insights.
Together, the two companies will pair Westinghouse’s HiVE™ and bertha™ nuclear AI solutions with Google Cloud technologies and expertise to streamline construction of new nuclear plants. AI tools will also improve the current nuclear fleet with data-driven AI insights, Westinghouse said.
“As the only fully licensed, construction-ready modular reactor available today, our AP1000 technology is the quickest way to add new sources of affordable and abundant nuclear energy to the U.S. grid,” said Dan Sumner, Westinghouse Interim Chief Executive Officer. “By partnering with Google Cloud to enhance our HiVE and bertha technology, and backed by 75 years of our proprietary nuclear data,we can accelerate the deployment of new AP1000 units, while implementing powerful AI technologies that will optimize the construction and operations of nuclear power plants.”
As part of this collaboration, Westinghouse and Google Cloud have successfully achieved a first-of-a-kind proof-of-concept leveraging Westinghouse WNEXUS digital plant design platform and HiVE™ artificial intelligence enhanced by Google Cloud technologies, including Vertex AI, Gemini and BigQuery, to autonomously generate and optimize AP1000 modular construction work packages.
In September 2024, Westinghouse introduced HiVE and bertha. These nuclear-specific AI solutions are supported by dedicated nuclear engineers, "and will optimize new nuclear deployment of our AP1000 reactor, AP300 small modular reactors and eVinci microreactor technologies," Westinghouse said.
