With a growing global demand for reliable, low-carbon sources of electricity to meet rising energy demands, governments, industry, and the scientific community are taking renewed interest in safe nuclear solutions, and researchers in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering are utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to determine how to effectively and safely harness them.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced on July 22, 2026, the first projects selected under the Genesis Mission Request for Applications (RFA) and Vanderbilt is leading two of the projects and is a key component of two others. The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by DOE, which is building the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia, and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments. DOE invited interdisciplinary teams to leverage novel AI models and frameworks to address over 20 national challenges spanning advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear energy, and quantum information science. About 5,000 proposals were submitted and only 278 were awarded a portion of the more than $290 million. Phase I awards range from $500,000 to $750,000 and will support a nine-month project period. The projects led by Vanderbilt each received the maximum amount.
Focus on Fusion
“This was very competitive,” said Steven Krahn, professor of the practice of nuclear environmental engineering at Vanderbilt and the lead principal investigator on one of the projects. “For our group within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department to be leading two winning teams and part of two additional teams is quite a feather in our cap.”
Krahn’s project is titled Development of an AI-Informed, Standards-Based, Model-Based Systems Engineering Methodology to Enhance Fusion Power Plant Life-Cycle Engineering. Other team members are the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Florida International University (FIU), Savannah River National Laboratory, and the Southern Company.
In the past, fusion was limited to a small number of experimental machines, researchers say. But now there’s major investment by the private sector in fusion technology. According to the Fusion Industry Association, more than $13 billion has been invested by the private sector, and there are 28 companies pursuing fusion power plants in the U.S.
“We are applying advanced, model-based systems engineering tools to the challenge of designing fusion power plant systems that can reliably produce power 24/7 in an environment that is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),” Krahn said.
Vanderbilt is a subawardee to EPRI on the other project titled, TRACER (TSPA Retrieval And Characterization Engine for Repositories): An AI-Enabled Engine to Retrieve, Structure, and Qualify TSPA Inputs Across Geologies and Waste Forms. The project will provide environmental engineering, safety analysis and performance assessment expertise to improve models used to assess the operation of a geological repository for nuclear waste—an issue that has been a challenge for the nuclear industry for several decades.
Continuing Cleanup
Kevin Brown, research professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt, is the lead PI on the project titled, Chemical Speciation and Partitioning Artificial Intelligence Framework for DOE Waste Processing and Disposal Optimization (WasteChemAI), which focuses on the chemical processing of nuclear waste. David Kosson, Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) at Vanderbilt, is co-PI. Other Vanderbilt collaborators include Abhishek Dubey, associate professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering, and Ahmad Taha, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
“Chemical processing for nuclear waste management and long-term demonstration of environmental safety requires detailed understanding of the behavior of chemical species and radionuclides under a range of process and environmental conditions,” Brown said. “The WasteChemAI project will use machine learning and artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate the engineering evaluation processes and provide more reliable information along with quantified uncertainty. We are honored to have been selected to lead a Genesis project in this field of critical national importance.”
Brown and Kosson are also subawardees of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory project, WasteCHAT: The First Tool Toward a Domain Foundation Model for DOE-EM. It addresses how to best process waste left over from The Manhattan Project, a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons.
“The Genesis awards Vanderbilt Civil and Environmental Engineering Profs. Krahn and Brown are each leading and the additional Genesis subawards to our team clearly places us in the leadership of applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning for nuclear energy, and nuclear waste treatment and disposal for energy and defense wastes,” Kosson said. “Together, these awards help address a trillion-dollar challenge for the nation. These awards also build on our successes and expertise with CRESP and the Nuclear Environmental Engineering Research Group.”