Nuclear power represents perhaps the highest potential for clean energy to power our energy needs for the future. In addition, the industry has a near peerless record in reducing CO2 emissions, minimizing workplace injuries, and avoiding fatalities on site. Despite this record, the major nuclear accidents that have occurred over the decades remain vivid in people's minds and the costs of compliance resulting from increased regulations has continued to grow. These costs make nuclear energy less competitive due to cost constraints, time to roll out new plants (permits and construction can take up to 20 years), and risks around regulatory approvals for plant startup.
According to the American Action Forum (AAF), the total cost of regulatory liabilities were $15.7 Billion or roughly $219 Million dollars per plant. In addition, annual regulatory compliance costs range from $7.4M - 15.5M per plant just to shuffle the paperwork with an average cost of $22M in fees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) (Source: American Action Forum).
Given the urgent challenges of climate change, one might hope for regulatory reform to make clean nuclear energy more cost competitive. However, history has shown that the fear of nuclear accidents has made regulatory reform an unachievable goal with advocates and critics both firmly locked into their positions. At the end of the day, the industry can't rely on regulatory reform to make nuclear more cost effective. As we used to say during my time at Bechtel, "nobody is coming, it is up to us!"
Instead of complaining about the costs of regulations and compliance, we should take advantage of the immense opportunities created by the Age of Digital Transformation. Over the coming years, nearly every manual task performed by people can be automated to some degree. This trend offers enormous opportunities to reduce manual labor costs associated with compliance to allow nuclear to become more cost competitive and to improve the bottom line for the industry.
So what are these trends and how should plants think about adopting them? There are a number of important technologies that offer real and tangible cost savings for the industry:
- Internet of Things - leveraging automated sensors to take readings, support predictive maintenance, automate material tracking/monitoring, and improve environmental compliance with low cost wireless sensors
- Cloud Computing - reducing capital expenditures and allowing capacity to scale up and down based on demand
- Drones - to automate security related patrols, take measurements, and leverage machine vision
- Robotic Process Automation - to eliminate manual, paper driven processes
- Continuous Compliance - integrating sensor platforms to automate the updates of compliance documentation and reporting
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) - to learn and make autonomous decisions that reduce the need for manual labor
At C2 Labs, we believe the future of nuclear centers around automated compliance. This belief has driven our significant investments in product development as we brought Atlasity to market to solve critical nuclear compliance needs in:
- Cyber Security
- Environmental Compliance
- Physical Security
- Nuclear Safety
- Quality Assurance
- Human Resources
For many years, the industry has been driven by continuous improvement and proven methodologies such as Lean/Six-Sigma. We have taken these best practices and combined then with our DevOps automation experience to deliver the most advanced continuous compliance automation platform in the industry. Contact us today to learn more about how our Atlasity product and our compliance concierge services can reduce the cost of compliance for your nuclear plant and unlock unprecedented savings. With over 50 years of executive experience in the US Nuclear Weapons program, no other company has a better understanding of the compliance challenges in nuclear along with our unique industry insights and automation best practices on how to overcome them.