The Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Nvidia, Amazon Web Services and several major small modular reactor (SMR) companies have launched the Prometheus project, a US initiative that seeks to speed up the advanced nuclear deployment through the use of AI.

The three-year initiative was awarded $60m (€52mm) under the US Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, founded to support cooperation between DOE national laboratories, industry, academia, and more to harness AI for breakthroughs across science. The initiative received the largest grant out of all the selected projects.

The DOE said Prometheus will leverage AI to design, licence, manufacture, construct and operate nuclear reactors with human support. The project will integrate AI into nuclear fuel fabrication and use AI for nuclear legacy document management.

INL said the industry partners have committed more than $200m in industry cost share and $30m in industry capital to execute the project and help deliver nuclear energy faster, safer and cheaper.