Atomic Canyon to Work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to Develop Safe, Efficient Open-Source Nuclear AI Model on World's Fastest Supercomputer

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., May 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Atomic Canyon, a pioneer of AI nuclear search, announced a new project with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), home of the Frontier supercomputer, to build a safe, efficient open-source AI model for the nuclear sector. Atomic Canyon will use Frontier – the world’s fastest supercomputer – to train the company’s AI model to understand complex nuclear terminology. Their collaboration with ORNL is a significant milestone, marking the development of the first AI model tailored for nuclear data and content.

Harnessing the power of Frontier, Atomic Canyon aims to open-source nuclear sector terminologies, helping to develop a nuclear AI infrastructure to build upon and to provide a powerful tool for efficient data navigation, document indexing, performance improvement and cost savings.

This advanced technology, developed by Atomic Canyon and trained on millions of publicly available documents from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), will utilize sentence-embedding models. These algorithms convert written sentences into numerical representations to allow AI to grasp nuclear terminology and accurately discern information. This deeper understanding makes the AI more effective and helps prevent AI “hallucinations” and biases during search and data analysis. Atomic Canyon’s technology will provide innovators with trusted, accurate assistance in understanding the broad spectrum of nuclear safety and security requirements. The model will not be trained on sensitive information on the design or operation of nuclear technologies, but will be able to assist with analyzing a vast array of public regulatory guides, inspection reports, and other documents, with the goal of increasing safety and public accountability.

Frontier, the world’s fastest and the first to achieve “exascale” computing performance (a quintillion calculations per second), will play a pivotal role in the collaboration between Atomic Canyon and ORNL. This project promises significant benefits for nuclear researchers, scientists, engineers, and stakeholders worldwide. Leveraging the capacity and speed of AI, alongside the transparency of open-source technology, the resulting platform is poised to take on the sector’s most complex challenges, driving a revitalization of nuclear energy.

“Our leading-edge technology is tailored to the nuclear sector,” says Trey Lauderdale, CEO and founder of Atomic Canyon. “Collaborating with ORNL’s premier supercomputing facilities such as Frontier will help our platform understand complex nuclear concepts, removing a major barrier to AI implementation in the nuclear sector. Moreover, our open-source approach will encourage transparency and collaboration among nuclear stakeholders and innovators focused on safety and security. Our goal is to help the world’s best and brightest have the information and technology they need to help navigate the climate and energy crisis.”

Last month, Atomic Canyon’s Neutron search platform launched to significant interest from the nuclear sector. This collaboration represents a broader initiative to expand access and facilitate innovation in the nuclear sector on a much larger scale.

By training their AI on nuclear terminology, Atomic Canyon will develop a safe, accurate tool that will enable researchers around the world to harness AI’s potential for solving nuclear challenges. This has become increasingly important, as climate change and soaring energy demands underscore the need for a transition to more abundant, clean energy sources.

“Open-source AI search, trained using the lab’s Frontier supercomputer, will play an essential role in the research, engineering, and development of nuclear energy and the nuclear sector, now and into the future,” says ORNL’s Thomas M. Evans, Group Lead and Distinguished R&D Staff, HPC Methods for Nuclear Applications. “This is crucial to advance nuclear innovation and move toward a future powered by sustainable energy.”

For more information or to see a demo of Neutron, please visit www.atomic-canyon.com.

About Atomic Canyon

AI powers the future at Atomic Canyon. Atomic Canyon’s advanced AI platform modernizes solutions across the nuclear energy sector, starting with Neutron—simplifying pages of documentation, enhancing Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) data access and unlocking workflow efficiency. Utilizing the NRC’s extensive library, the AI is a knowledgeable navigator, making data more accessible and promoting industry knowledge-sharing.

Atomic Canyon was founded by CEO Trey Lauderdale (previously CEO and Founder of Voalte, acquired for $180m) and CTO and Co-Founder Kristian Kielhofner (previously CTO of Star 2 Star Communications, acquired for $437m). Their vision is to lead in AI-driven cost efficiencies for the nuclear energy sector.

Atomic Canyon’s AI application is designed for use in and by nuclear power plants, manufacturers of next-generation reactors and government and national laboratories.