Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Automating Current Nuclear Operations and Work Processes

All dates for this event occur in the past.

Ahmad Al Rashdan, Ph.D., Senior R&D Scientist, Idaho National Laboratory

TOPIC: The operation and maintenance of a nuclear power plant depends on labor-intensive activities that are required to meet the industry’s high safety standards. The manual nature of these activities results in a cost disadvantage to other energy industries. In order for nuclear energy to remain part of the nation’s energy portfolio, the nuclear power industry must innovate and migrate these manual activities to automated processes to reduce its operating cost. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program has anticipated this need and launched multiple plant-modernization research and development efforts to achieve this mission. Dr. Ahmad Al Rashdan, an Idaho National Laboratory (INL) senior research and development scientist, leads several of these LWRS efforts. Because artificial intelligence (AI) is a key enabler for modern automation solutions, these efforts leveraged advancements in AI models and methods in creating custom solutions for the nuclear industry. An overview of some key uses of AI in automation will be presented in this seminar. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Al Rashdan is currently a senior R&D scientist at INL. He has roughly 15 years of industrial and research experience in automation, instrumentation, and control, comprising nearly six years at INL, six at Asea Brown Boveri, three at Texas A&M University, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency. He also worked for Daimler Chrysler-Mercedes Group and Fraunhofer Institute for Production and Automation in Germany. Dr. Al Rashdan has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University, a M.Sc. in information technology and automation systems from Esslingen University of Applied Science, and a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology. His experience includes data structuring, analytics, automated work processes, control-systems design and development, online monitoring for nuclear systems, wireless instruments, in-pile instrumentation, image processing, and automated modeling and simulation. Dr. Al Rashdan is an active contributor to and organizer of several conferences and events. He authored or co-authored more than 40 technical reports and journal papers and five patent applications and is an active reviewer for several nuclear energy and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) journals, as well as many DOE grants. He is the recipient and co-recipient of more than 15 recognition and funding awards. Dr. Al Rashdan is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the American Nuclear Society.

Category: Nuclear Seminar
Tag: event