The Idaho National Laboratory and NVIDIA have partnered to leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems.
As AI adoption continues to expand across government and industry, collaborations like the INL-NVIDIA effort underscore how emerging technologies are being applied to complex national priorities. These developments reflect the broader momentum behind AI-driven modernization efforts across the federal landscape. Save your spot now at the 2026 Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 18!
INL said Tuesday the partnership supports the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission and focuses on a “grand challenge” known as Prometheus, which aims to bring commercial-scale nuclear reactors online in years rather than decades.
“This partnership represents a transformative approach to one of our nation’s greatest challenges for deploying abundant, reliable nuclear energy at the speed and scale required for our AI-driven future,” said INL Director John Wagner. “By leveraging AI to design, license and operate reactors, we can fundamentally change the timeline for bringing advanced nuclear energy online.”
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What Is the Objective of the Prometheus Challenge?
The Prometheus Grand Challenge aims to use AI-enabled, human-in-the-loop workflows to accelerate nuclear reactor development and operations.
According to INL, Prometheus seeks to achieve at least a twofold acceleration in deployment schedules and more than a 50-percent reduction in operational costs. The initiative also aims to address rising electricity demand and harness AI to drive a scientific and industrial revolution.
What Are the Strategic Initiatives of the INL-NVIDIA Collaboration?
INL said its partnership with NVIDIA will focus on several strategic initiatives: AI-powered nuclear design, licensing, manufacturing, construction and operation; industry advancement; supercomputing infrastructure; data validation; and code acceleration.
Through the collaboration, the two organizations will expedite nuclear energy deployment by developing generative AI, agentic workflows and digital twins and advance the use of MOOSE, BISON, Pronghorn, Griffin and other nuclear simulation codes on NVIDIA GPU architectures to enhance simulation capabilities.
“Combining INL’s decades of nuclear expertise with NVIDIA AI infrastructure will put AI to work to design, license and operate reactors faster, safer and at lower cost — delivering the abundant energy needed to power scientific discovery,” said John Josephakis, global vice president of sales and business development for HPC/supercomputing at NVIDIA.
The partnership may expand to include reactor developers, investors, utilities and other national labs to develop a broader ecosystem for AI-enabled nuclear deployment.
“This public-private partnership presents a targeted approach to AI-acceleration that goes beyond incremental ‘uplift’ improvements. It has the potential to transform the paradigm for how we deploy nuclear energy in addition to how we advance R&D and discovery,” said Rian Bahran, deputy assistant secretary of energy for nuclear reactors.
What Is the Genesis Mission?
According to DOE, the Genesis Mission is a national initiative that aims to develop a scientific platform to drive energy innovation, accelerate discovery science and strengthen national security.
Established through a November executive order, the mission seeks to connect leading supercomputers, AI systems, experimental facilities and unique scientific datasets to double the research productivity and impact of U.S. research and innovation within 10 years.
DOE recently announced 26 science and technology challenges intended to advance the Genesis Mission and accelerate AI-enabled innovation. Prometheus is one of those challenges.
In December, DOE signed agreements with NVIDIA, Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Google, Oracle, Microsoft and 18 other organizations to advance the Genesis Mission and announced a $320 million investment to accelerate the development of AI capabilities in support of the initiative.
NVIDIA also signed a memorandum of understanding with Argonne National Laboratory to leverage AI and high-performance computing to address energy and national security challenges.
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