PI: Matteo Pozzi
Co-PI(s): Kaushik Dayal
University: Carnegie Mellon University
Industry Partner: Advanced Reactors, Westinghouse Electric Company LLC
Nuclear microreactors provide a reliable, flexible, and carbon-free energy source. Westinghouse, based in Western PA, is developing a new generation of microreactors, which can have a significant impact in the transition away from fossil fuels. These microreactors are equipped with a control system for power control, but the monitoring system to optimize future operation is still in the development phase. This project will outline a collaboration between Westinghouse and CMU, to optimally design a monitoring system that can be integrated in a digital twin of a microreactor, to track its condition state, predict its evolution and guide its preventive maintenance. The project will develop a scheme for placing sensors (including measurements such as temperature and strain), monitoring the microreactors, and of a platform for analyzing the data collected by several microreactors, to process them at a central level calibrating a hierarchy of models: a general model for the reactor type, and one specifically calibrated model per each reactor instance, according to a set of interconnected probabilistic digital twins.