Emerging AI Use in the Nuclear Industry

By Mari Inoue

The nuclear industry has been exploring possibilities of the use of Artificial Intelligence in military systems and to facilitate and enhance the work of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Following are some AI trends in the nuclear sector as well as agencies that oversee the use of AI tools:

In mid-April 2024, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) published on its website, “Should artificial intelligence be banned from nuclear weapons systems?,” an article written by a physics professor. The article argues that “AI systems offer an opportunity to strengthen nuclear deterrence by providing a more accurate and capable defensive nuclear response … AI is simply a strategic tool, like nuclear weapons themselves. Concern over AI should not preclude the use of AI in strengthening nuclear deterrence. Nor should AI be deployed in those systems simply for the sake of deployment.”

In May 2023, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Markley (D-OR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced S.1364, Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023. The bill prohibits the use of federal funds to deploy nuclear weapons with autonomous weapons systems that are not subject to meaningful human control. The bill aims to ensure that no decision to launch a nuclear weapon or to select or engage targets for such purposes is made by AI.

“We would never defer a decision on nuclear employment to AI,” said Paul Dean, the U.S. State Department’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, in a May 1, 2024, briefing.

On October 30, 2023, President Biden signed an executive order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” In regard to developing guidelines for AI safety and security in the nuclear sector, it ordered the Secretary of Energy to “develop tools to evaluate AI capabilities to generate outputs that may represent nuclear, nonproliferation, biological, chemical, critical infrastructure, and energy-security threats or hazards” solely for the purposes of “guarding against these threats.”

On December 12, 2023, as per the aforementioned executive order, the DOE launched the Office of Critical and Emerging Technology to coordinate research on AI that could be used in the energy, military, and health sectors. On May 30, 2024, it announced that Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both in Tennessee, will partner to develop dependable AI for U.S. military applications.

In May 2023, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission published the Artificial Intelligence Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2023-2027. It describes how the agency will execute its five strategic goals which include strengthening and expanding AI partnerships. Furthermore, in its policy memo of April 25, 2024, the NRC concluded that “successful internal adoption of AI” will “strengthen the agency’s ability to regulate the use of AI in NRC-regulated activities.” In fiscal year 2025, the NRC plans to invest in acquiring generative AI services and integrating AI with the online public search technology used by the NRC, also known as ADAMS.

In March 2024, the Office of Management and Budget issued its first government-wide policy to mitigate the risks of AI, and recognized, among other things, that the use of AI is presumed to be safety-impacting if used to control the safety-critical functions within nuclear reactors, materials, and waste.

AI is energy intensive. According to the recent analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030, more than double the amount currently used. Furthermore, internet queries using AI require approximately ten times the electricity of traditional internet searches. The nuclear energy sector, backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, is aiming to build new reactors to power data centers in order to meet the energy demand of the AI industry.

— Oak Ridge National Laboratory, May 30; NBC, March 7, 2024; Department of Energy, Dec. 12, 2023

— Mari Inoue, is a lawyer and activist based in New York City, born and raised in Tokyo, and co-founder of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World (mp-nuclear-free.com).