Artificial Intelligence

Prometheus

Prometheus provides an AI platform that helps accelerate nuclear power plant design, licensing, manufacturing and operations to reduce deployment time and costs.

What is Prometheus?

Prometheus is a transformative effort within the Department of Energy Genesis Mission initiative to accelerate nuclear energy deployment. Nuclear power plants have historically faced long development timelines and burgeoning costs, limiting America’s ability to deliver affordable, resilient and reliable energy as demand grows. 

The initiative brings together DOE national laboratories, universities and commercial partners to reduce reactor deployment timelines by applying AI, engineering models and advanced computing across the reactor lifecycle.

Industry partners have committed more than $200 million in cost share and $30 million in capital, proprietary design data and commercial deployment pathways, reinforcing Prometheus as a collaborative effort to accelerate reactor deployment.

Why Prometheus Matters

Prometheus is designed to cut reactor deployment timelines and operating costs in half by improving every stage of the reactor lifecycle.

Reduction in design and licensing workflow time
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Reduction in manufacturing cycle time
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Reduction in operational staffing requirements
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Prometheus At A Glance

  • DOE Genesis Initiative
  • Public-private Partnership
  • AI-enabled reactor deployment
  • Open and secure archtecture
  • National laboratory collaboration
  • Industry and university participation

Prometheus combines DOE nuclear expertise, decades of operational data, advanced computing resources and commercial partnerships to accelerate reactor deployment.

How Prometheus Accelerates Reactor Deployment

Prometheus applies AI across the reactor lifecycle—from design and licensing through manufacturing, construction and operations—to reduce deployment time, lower costs and improve efficiency.

AI-Accelerated Design and Licensing

Uses AI to generate, analyze and verify reactor designs while preparing traceable licensing documentation for DOE and the NRC.

AI-Enabled Manufacturing and Construction

Applies AI to manufacturing planning, construction sequencing and inspection to shorten production timelines.

Autonomous Operations

Uses AI to monitor operations, detect anomalies and recommend actions while maintaining human oversight.

Governed AI Platform

Provides the production-scale AI foundation for Prometheus through a governed orchestration layer and persistent digital thread connecting design, licensing and construction. The platform integrates with DOE's Genesis Mission Platform and commercial AI tools.

Nuclear Knowledge Base

Converts decades of DOE nuclear data into a searchable knowledge base for AI-assisted engineering.

Key Facilities Powering Prometheus

Prometheus leverages DOE’s unparalleled combination of nuclear expertise, experimental facilities and advanced computing resources to accelerate reactor deployment and reduce the cost of new nuclear energy.

Idaho National Laboratory

  • Advanced Test Reactor
  • Materials and Fuels Complex
  • Transient Reactor Test Facility
  • Neutron Radiography Reactor

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • Manufacturing Demonstration Facility
  • Frontier supercomputer
Argonne Campus

Argonne National Laboratory

  • Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop
  • Aurora supercomputer

Sandia National Laboratories

  • Nuclear energy safety and security test beds

Frequently Asked Questions

Understanding Prometheus

The Genesis Mission is a Department of Energy (DOE) initiative that leverages AI to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation. It aims to create an integrated platform connecting supercomputers, experimental facilities, AI systems and unique datasets across major scientific domains. The goal is to double the productivity and impact of American research within a decade.

The Genesis Mission consists of four primary coordinated efforts: 

  • Transformative AI Models Consortium (ModCon): Focused on developing advanced AI models for science
  • American Science Cloud (AmSC): Provides infrastructure and platform capabilities
  • AI for national security component: Addresses security-related applications of AI
  • Phase I and Phase II projects: Demonstrating AI-enabled capabilities across scientific and applied energy domains over nine-month and three-year timeframes

ModCon is the Transformational AI Model Consortium, an effort led by Argonne National Laboratory to align data and AI models to tackle the nation’s science and engineering challenges. Argonne is undertaking the data and model-building activities outlined in Section 50404 of the OBBB Act (P.L. 119-21). ModCon provides funding to central activities, as well as for seed model teams to make early progress in particular prioritized domains. 

The AmSC is a sister effort to ModCon. AmSC is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and seeks to provision and deploy computing infrastructure and base platform capabilities to enable the Genesis Mission across the DOE laboratory complex. 

Phase I projects are tackling various science and engineering challenges as part of early Genesis Mission activities. Phase I projects have received modest initial funding to make quick progress in their project domains over their nine-month duration. The teams are composed of national laboratories, academia and industry. A select number of Phase I projects will graduate to Phase II projects.

Like Phase I projects, Phase II projects are teams of researchers tackling engineering or science challenges through AI. However, Phase II projects are meant to be much larger efforts than Phase I projects and instead span three years. Phase II projects may have multiple subteams, each tackling a crucial aspect of the research topic.

Prometheus is a Phase II project focused on making early progress in leveraging AI to accelerate new nuclear power deployment and reduce operating costs of new nuclear power plants.  Prometheus started as a seed model team under ModCon and has since been awarded Phase II funding.

No. Prometheus is a public-private partnership uniting four DOE national laboratories ( Idaho, Argonne, Oak Ridge and Sandia national laboratories), four universities (North Carolina State, Penn State, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and University of Texas at Austin), and the AI for Nuclear Energy Consortium, which includes reactor developers, technology companies and other commercial partners from across the nuclear and tech sectors. 

Yes. Consortium members have already committed more than $200 million in cash, in-kind support, computers, software and data, including over $30 million in direct cash funding to national laboratory and university research.

Prospective Users & Adopters

Prometheus offers AI-driven tools for reactor design, safety analysis, manufacturing, and operations, reducing complexity and accelerating deployment.

Prometheus will be offered in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model within the Genesis Mission’s American Science Cloud. It will also be available through commercial cloud marketplaces, including AWS Marketplace and Microsoft Azure Marketplace, for organizations that want a pre-configured tool within their own environment.

Yes. The Prometheus platform is containerized and packaged as a separately deployable system, so organizations such as nuclear utilities, reactor vendors and fuel cycle operators can run it within their own cloud tenant or on-premises infrastructure, keeping proprietary data behind their own firewall. 

An initial platform prototype has been built and validated under seed funding. Under the Phase II project, the production platform is targeted for initial deployment on the Genesis Mission Platform by March 2027, with transferable platform specifications for broader commercial and DOE adoption targeted later in the year. 

Priorities are shaped through the AI for Nuclear Energy Consortium, a commercially governed body in which Tier 1 members (contributing at least $10M in cash and in-kind resources) hold a seat on the consortium’s board of directors, and an advisory board of other member companies contributes use cases and independent assessments each quarter.

Every AI advantage claim is measured against a documented non-AI baseline established before an AI-assisted workflow is used. Prometheus publishes its benchmark suites, baseline datasets and evaluation protocols through the Genesis Mission Platform at each major milestone so results can be independently reviewed and reproduced. 

Yes. Data security will follow DOE and industry best practices.

DOE Laboratory Researchers

Prometheus is different because the end objective is to deliver a commercial-grade product in a commercially hosted environment for industry-first use. In that way, Prometheus can be thought of as a software entity within the DOE ecosystem attempting to deliver a product for external users. 

Prometheus is organized into five research workstreams — platform and AI infrastructure; design and licensing; manufacturing and construction; autonomous operations; and data curation and preparation. Each of these are led by a technical lead who reports to the project lead. A technical integration council of the project lead, deputy project lead, chief scientist and all technical leads meets weekly to manage cross-workstream dependencies, and the project operates under an adaptive management policy that allows resources to be reconfigured as the technology and science develop.

Your research can inform platform development and integrate into Prometheus via standard agent templates, the platform API, and common exchange protocols. The objective of the Prometheus platform is to handle orchestration, workflow management and data management — with extensibility into tangential AI-efforts and engineering domains.

Intellectual property rights will follow DOE guidelines and partnership agreements.

Commercial Software Companies

DOE is building the core of Prometheus to accelerate nuclear energy deployment using AI while ensuring safety and regulatory compliance. By creating a foundational platform, DOE can establish standards, benchmarks, and interoperability that enable industrywide adoption and innovation.

Integrating with Prometheus offers several benefits:

  • Access to a growing ecosystem of nuclear energy innovators and AI developers
  • Expanded market reach by aligning with DOE-backed initiatives
  • Interoperability with common commercial tools for design, safety analysis and operations
  • Interoperability with models and existing AI capabilities
  • Early influence on platform development, ensuring your solutions meet industry needs

Integrations will be handled through formal agreements that define:

  • Technical interoperability standards (e.g., APIs, containerization)
  • Licensing terms that protect intellectual property while enabling collaboration
  • Compliance with DOE security and safety requirements
  • The goal is to create a transparent, mutually beneficial framework for commercial partners

All Industry & University Partners:

Idaho National Laboratory (Lead) • Argonne National Laboratory • Oak Ridge National Laboratory • Sandia National Laboratory • North Carolina State University • Pennsylvania State University • University of Tennessee – Knoxville • University of Texas – Austin • Aalo Atomics • Alpha Tech Research Corp • AlphaPX, Inc. • Amazon Web Services • Ansys • Antares Industries • Apollo Atomics • Atalanta • Atomic Canyon • Deployable Energy • Everstar • GE Vernova • HGP Intelligent Energy • Hidden Layer • Kiewit Nuclear Solutions • Microsoft • NVIDIA • Oklo Inc. • Standard Nuclear (Daniel Vega) • Strange Mood Engineering • TerraPower • Triastron • Valar Atomics • Westinghouse Electric Corporation • X-energy

Connect with our Team

Questions about our research, capabilities or collaboration opportunities?
Our team is ready to connect you with the right experts and resources at INL.

Peter Suyderhoud

Lead

peter.suyderhoud@inl.gov

Logan Browning

Engagements

logan.browning@inl.gov

Jason Hales

Partnerships and Agreements

jason.hales@inl.gov