Why We Invested in Nuclearn
Nuclear energy is the largest source of clean power in the U.S., with 90 operating nuclear reactors across 28 states accounting for roughly 18% of all energy produced in the country. As the U.S. experiences increased electricity demand from data centers, manufacturers, and the electrification of buildings and vehicles, centralized nuclear plants are uniquely capable of providing firm, around-the-clock power — making them vital for grid stability and reliability. But while tens of millions of homes rely on nuclear power, many of these reactors are aging to points well past their originally intended design lives and are applying for extensions to their operating licenses. This is exacerbated by the workforce crisis facing the industry, where 1 in 4 nuclear workers are retiring while new grads seeking roles among the operating fleet have dropped substantially in the last decade. The industry’s aging asset base, combined with a growing workforce shortage, threatens a reliable energy supply at a moment when demand for carbon-free baseload power is higher than ever before.
That context is what drew us to the space and why SJF is excited to share that we participated in a $10.5 million Series A funding round in Nuclearn, the leader in AI-driven solutions for the nuclear industry. Founded by industry veterans Bradley Fox and Jerrold Vincent, Nuclearn uses AI to automate time-consuming tasks like condition report coding and corrective action program (CAP) screening to help the nuclear industry scale in spite of long-term headcount challenges.
Accelerating resolutions at nuclear sites
The nuclear industry is understandably governed by stringent regulations and industry standards, and those requirements can lead to significant costs in terms of time and resources when making changes at a nuclear plant. Even for something simple like replacing a lightbulb, nuclear plants require rigorous documentation and strict procedural adherence to ensure nothing is overlooked and to maintain their culture of safety and quality. Nuclearn’s primary value proposition meets customers where they are by delivering significant operational and cost efficiencies to the existing nuclear fleet through AI automation, which is a key differentiator to other startups in the industry largely focused on applications for new development. Nuclearn has earned widespread trust in an industry historically reluctant to change — the company already serves roughly half of the U.S. nuclear fleet with its product CAP AI, which streamlines reporting processes by automatically binning corrective action/condition reports and routing them to the correct stakeholders. In one case, Nuclearn’s AI-powered Maintenance Rule evaluation tool and CAP AI automated 87% of over 38,000 condition reports — resulting in more than 5,600 hours of engineering time saved while maintaining 99.95% accuracy in regulatory-critical decision support.
The company’s AI solutions go beyond reporting to provide an AI assistant for nuclear professionals that automates repetitive work and allows employees to focus on higher-order tasks. AtomAssist is trained on a vast array of nuclear industry data with operationally-specific context, enabling users to match bids to requirements, write evaluations and work plans, summarize lengthy documents, talk to documents in natural language, and get high fidelity answers back, supercharging their productivity. These use cases and many others offered by Nuclearn resonate with me as something sorely needed in the industry, as I spent the first leg of my career at ENERCON, a key service provider to the nuclear industry, manually performing many of these tasks on a daily basis.
We believe in Nuclearn’s ability to expand its work in the U.S. nuclear market because of the team’s extensive expertise and impeccable industry reputation. The founding team brings decades of combined experience to Nuclearn, and they have lived the problems they are now solving with AI and automation.
Supporting the nuclear field
One of the other aspects that attracted us to Nuclearn is the company’s commitment to working with industry peers toward a clean energy future. The Nuclearn team understands that a safety incident at one plant negatively affects the whole industry, so competitors within the industry are incentivized to share knowledge on modernization, efficiency, and safety. Nuclearn’s allied non-profit, the Nuclear Business Innovation Council, is an industry-led, vendor-neutral effort to enable that knowledge sharing. SJF is excited to support Nuclearn’s field-building efforts, which leverage collaboration to move the whole industry forward.
For more on how Nuclearn is enhancing safety in the nuclear industry, read TechCrunch’s coverage of the Series A funding round.
