DEALING WITH DATA | ASSET MANAGEMENT


The role of digital twins


So-called ‘Digital twins’ are the buzzword of the energy industry at the moment, but Sam Stephens says the phrase means different things to different people. “The digital twin could be anything from a laser scan of the facility that represents the current condition, through to something that is more like what Rolls-Royce or GE will do with their jet engines, where you have a piece of plant that is fully connected and sharing live data with the operators. There is a spectrum.” In the nuclear sector, he thinks the three key stages of the nuclear life cycle – new build, operation and decommissioning – each gains benefits from a digital twin, “But it will have a different flavour for each part of the life-cycle.” He explains, “We see low maturity digital twins supporting major programme management of Legacy assets. For new build


it is really around how you set the strategy to support operation but also capture the data in design and build to preserve that value for the lifetime. In operational assets it is about strategies to support operation of the plant.” He adds that “we expect the assets to become even more connected to a virtual representation. This is a long-term trend that we don’t see going away.”


That does not just apply in fission: fusion developers are


looking ahead: “We have worked very closely with some of the fusion programmes because in order to ensure that your plant is going to work, more and more of the testing and analysis and simulation is going to need to be done in silica rather than on the plant. As assets become even more complex they require digital solutions to design and build them.” ■


at one site or piece of equipment, or it may mean common trends that might occur across a lot of plants. Finally, Stephens notes that AI/ML can help inform decisions about where additional data might be required. As sensors become cheaper and cheaper, AI/ML can help in planning and prioritising where a company can best place sensors to predict plant issues and reduce downtime.


Replacing lost expertise Can artificial intelligence replace the all-round experience of long-serving nuclear industry members? Stephens insists that the aim is a partnership. “A lot of our approaches to technology adoption is looking at how we can provide tools that make people in the plants’ lives easier”. He also thinks it is future-proofing the industry against losing individuals’ experience. “When you look at the challenges the industry faces, particularly around skills, increasingly we are going to be resource-constrained. With that shortage of skills we need to find smart ways of doing things more efficiently and differently. In that respect we see technology helping.” The nuclear industry faces a particular challenge in


innovating because new processes have to be qualified so self-contained use-cases are more likely to be able to pay back quickly. In practice, Stephens says that rollout “comes down to the business case and the risk appetite. You have to acknowledge with these new technologies the business case will have to be proved. If it has a return on investment of five or 10 years the current management will take a view of ‘not quite yet’.” That means ML/AI and digitalisation advocates have to “identify uses that have immediate benefits that set us up for incremental further investment”. Even if plant operators are cautious, one way they can reduce implementation costs at a later date is to consider their data management. SNC Lavalin is making sure that all of the data it captures from nuclear facilities is structured to be readily available to get service insights. He says, “When you have the data structured and available and as you increase the quantity, then it increases the opportunities to use data analytics. That needs to be put in place first of all, before you can leverage some of the smarter data analytics processes.”


Data security For good reasons, the nuclear industry is conservative and


very rigorous about data security. However as the data industry matures nuclear is able to follow its infrastructure peers into more flexible arrangements while retaining that security. For example, Stephens says nuclear will have to follow other industries in shifting towards solutions that are cloud-based. It can do that safely, he says: “That is an inevitable move, as a lot of software providers increasingly put solutions on the cloud, rather than as traditionally on servers. That is a change that the industry needs to embrace. There are arguments that you can improve security with these facilities.” Attitudes are starting to change. “The pandemic was a big shift, because a lot of operators found that they were reliant on Microsoft Teams and cloud-based solutions to support ongoing work. That’s one area where we found the pandemic really accelerated things.” Now, he says, “some of the newer technologies that


are available enables us to develop solutions much more quickly and in a really agile way. Of course, it has to have a cyber security risk assessment.” Cloud-based systems provide some future-proofing


too, he says: “A lot of clients are increasingly nervous around vendor locking. Signing up to a solution means that essentially switching costs in the future could be prohibitive. We are looking at how they structure and the standards they use around the management of that data, so that it increases portability between systems. With a cloud- based approach it is less likely that you will be locked into any one vendor.” These types of stepwise move towards better use of data


and more flexibility about, for example, using the cloud, needs regulatory acceptance. Stephens says regulatory consideration will also be stepwise. “It is one thing being presented with insights that help humans make better decisions and there is another thing relying upon those in order to assure nuclear safety,” he says. From a regulatory perspective “there is still quite some


time to go before the first line of defence is relying on AI/ML to spot a potential issue. That is a combination of technological of maturity and also maturity of adoption within the industry. And in order to do that you require a really strong foundation of skills, of people understanding and using it and a lot of experience in having used it and some of the pitfalls and constraints.” ■


www.neimagazine.com | November 2022 | 31


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