(Idaho National Laboratory Press Release, February 17, 2026)
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — The Idaho National Laboratory and NVIDIA have partnered to advance nuclear energy deployment through artificial intelligence. The collaboration aims to accelerate advanced nuclear reactor deployment and reduce costs.
INL and NVIDIA’s collaboration is part of the Genesis Mission, a national initiative to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced 26 pressing national science and technology challenges for this Mission under President Trump’s Executive Order 14363. This partnership will drive the challenge: Delivering Nuclear Energy that is Faster, Safer, and Cheaper, codenamed Prometheus.
As part of the Genesis Mission platform, Prometheus will accelerate nuclear energy deployment by using AI to design, license, manufacture, construct, and operate reactors with human-in-the-loop workflows, enabling at least 2x schedule acceleration and greater than 50% operational cost reductions. Prometheus will address two critical national priorities: harnessing artificial intelligence to drive a new industrial and scientific revolution; and meeting surging electricity demand to power the economy of the next century. This collaboration is designed to create a virtuous cycle where AI enables rapid nuclear deployment, and nuclear energy provides the baseload power required for next-generation AI infrastructure.
“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 John Wagner, INL director. “By leveraging AI to design, license and operate reactors, we can fundamentally change the timeline for bringing advanced nuclear energy online.”
“NVIDIA is honored to collaborate with the U.S. government to apply AI and accelerated computing to advance nuclear energy, while reducing energy costs for Americans,” said John Josephakis, global vice president of Sales and Business Development for HPC/Supercomputing at NVIDIA. “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.”
“This is the moment to decisively advance AI-accelerated nuclear energy deployment, increasing America’s energy affordability while also catalyzing the development of Artificial Intelligence in the United States,” said Rian Bahran, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Reactors. “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.”
The collaboration will focus on several strategic initiatives:
- AI-powered nuclear design, licensing, manufacturing, construction, and operation: Developing generative AI, digital twins, and agentic workflows to accelerate nuclear energy deployment.
- Industry advancement: Supporting broader nuclear industry adoption of accelerated computing and AI tools while providing guidance to regulatory entities on state-of-the-art autonomous and digital nuclear capabilities.
- Supercomputing infrastructure: Leveraging Department of Energy leadership-class supercomputers for large-scale model training and simulation while evaluating on-premises NVIDIA AI systems for real-time operations.
- Data validation: Using INL’s legacy nuclear data, laboratory data, and on-site reactors — including the Neutron Radiography Reactor, or NRAD, and the Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation, or MARVEL (not yet operational)— to provide real-world data for digital twin validation.
- Code acceleration: Accelerating critical nuclear simulation codes including MOOSE, BISON, Griffin, and Pronghorn on NVIDIA GPU architectures to unlock unprecedented simulation capabilities.
The collaboration may expand to include additional stakeholders including nuclear reactor developers, utilities, investors, and other national laboratories to establish a comprehensive ecosystem for AI-driven nuclear deployment.
Under the Genesis Mission, Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory are collaborating with industry and academia to provide Americans with more affordable energy while reducing human error, strengthening national security, and directly supporting U.S. energy dominance with multi-billion-dollar cost savings per gigawatt of generating capacity.
About Idaho National Laboratory
Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
