The First Real-Time Digital Twin of a Nuclear Reactor

In this chapter we examine the first fully operation digital twin of a fissile nuclear reactor. In 2023, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) partnered with Idaho State University (ISU) to create and run a digital twin of their AGN-201 fissile nuclear reactor. This reactor can produce up to 5 watts and has proven to be the perfect testbed for discovering how best to implement a digital twin of a larger reactor system. INL created an integrated, cloud-based digital twin capable of measuring data from the reactor in near real-time and built the foundation for running operations such as machine learning and analytics in near real-time in an offsite location. This experiment is a key step in building a digital twin of a larger reactor system and has helped highlight many potential pitfalls and problems that such an endeavor might face. This experiment has also shown the great promise that a cloud-first approach has when creating digital twins.