#nuclear-regulation

#nuclear-regulation

On Wednesday, Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority announced that it is halting the relicensing process for two reactors at the Hamaoka plant after revelations that the operator fabricated seismic hazard data. Japan has been slowly reactivating its extensive nuclear power plant collection after it was shut down following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. The latest scandal is especially shocking, given that the Hamaoka plant is located on the coast near an active subduction fault-just as Fukushima Daiichi is.

The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by Keir Starmer in February after the government promised to rip up archaic rules and slash regulations to get Britain building. It issued a stark warning on Monday, warning that Britain needed a radical reset of the rules around nuclear power to save tens of billions in costs and reverse the industry's decline.

Last fall, the house of Bezos announced a $500 million investment in SMR startup X-Energy. On Thursday, the e-tailer revealed that X-Energy's Xe-100 SMR designs would eventually supply Washington State with "up to" 960 megawatts of clean energy. "Eventually" is the key word here as construction isn't expected to start until the end of the decade and the plants won't begin operations until sometime in the 2030s.

The regulator expects that next wave of plants will use new designs it has never inspected, so perhaps AI can help it prepare. It is unclear what role the regulator imagines AI will play in nuclear inspection, but highly-regulated industries such as nuclear power produce huge quantities of data and documentation. AI could conceivably spot anomalies in that information and advise human inspectors where best to focus their attention.