(ORNL: Oak Ridge, TN) -- A study led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory details how artificial intelligence researchers created an AI model to help identify new alloys used as shielding for housing fusion applications components in a nuclear fusion reactor. The findings mark a major step toward improving nuclear fusion facilities.

This project began several years ago under former AI Initiative director David Womble. ORNL AI data scientist Massimiliano Lupo Pasini advocated for it to continue under the initiative’s Artificial Intelligence for Scientific Discovery, or AISD, thrust area. The results of this study were published in the journal Nature, under “scientific data.”

“These alloys are needed to achieve exceptional performance at very high temperatures, in terms of both resistance to high temperatures and the structural mechanical properties needed to use them in complex nuclear plants,” says Lupo Pasini.

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