Practical Applications of Gaussian Process with Uncertainty Quantification and Sensitivity Analysis for Digital Twin for Accident Tolerant Fuel

Abstract

The application of digital twin (DT) technology to the nuclear field is one of the challenges in the future development of nuclear energy. Possible applications of DT technology in the nuclear field are expected to be very wide: operate commercial nuclear reactors, monitor spent fuel storage and disposal facilities, and develop new nuclear systems. As U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) recently announced, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) will be new domains in the nuclear field. Considering the data science perspective, Gaussian Process (GP) has proven to be an ML algorithm for modeling and simulation components of the digital twin framework, specifically for the accident tolerant fuel (ATF) concepts. ATF is one of the high-priority areas for both the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NRC. GP's inherent treatment of lack of data, missing data, and data inconsistencies (noisy/erroneous data) present in the ATF concepts make it an attractive machine learning algorithm for implementation in the DT framework. This chapter focuses on the practical demonstration of GP and its applicability to the DT framework for predicting ATF.