 All right, on my clock, it looks like it's 10.30. And I'd like to get started on this session. You know, I welcome all of you today to our session on opportunities and challenges for advanced reactor construction. And you know, I applaud your tenaciousness of coming to the last session of the RIC and hope, you know, the RIC has been a really great learning experience for everyone. So having said that, I'm going to take care of a couple of housekeeping issues. If you've gone to multiple sessions, which I'm sure you have, you already know that the QR code up there is how you submit questions. So that's both for the people who are turning into this session virtually and also for people in the room as well. And to that end, I wanted to let you know that we were going to hold questions till after all the presentations, and then we're going to have a panel discussion, you know, with the questions afterwards. And in addition, you know, some of you have been in sessions where they've had polling questions. We don't have any polling questions in this session. So I guess I'll go ahead and move on to the, well, the next slide. And I just want to start off by saying that I'm Louise Lund. I'm the director for the Division of Engineering and then Office of Research at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And I welcome all of you today. And with me on the panel, OK, you know, to my left, you'll see Ashley Finan. And she's the director for the National Reactor Innovation Center at the Idaho National Laboratories. And next to her is Joshua Bedovie. And he is a senior operations leadership manager at General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy. And Brett Tegeler is to his left. He's a consulting engineer for Westinghouse Electric Company and Hisan Chakras, principal project manager for the Electric Power Research Institute. And we welcome here to the panel today. And just to set the stage, you know, for the discussions that we'll be having, you know, I think it's apparent that new construction technologies, you know, are being considered for advanced reactors. And there is both a desire to better the technologies and also the economic advantages from doing so. And you'll hear a lot more during this discussion. So they're making strides in developing advanced construction technologies to reduce the construction cost and hopefully shorten the construction schedules. So there's a lot of different advanced reactor construction techniques under development. And you've heard probably about a lot of them, modular construction, steel concrete composite construction, steel bricks, which is a trademark, seismic base isolation, floating platforms, augmented reality for construction management, digital twins, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and many other things. So the speakers will discuss various activities their organizations are conducting. So what is the NRC doing? Well, we have a lot of activities underway. And part of this is setting the stage by having a technology inclusive regulatory framework. But it's imperative that we stay current with the emerging advanced construction techniques and the development of the related codes and standards and how the related NRC guidance may be updated. And we are also looking at how first-of-a-kind advances would be deployed and how they would be inspected, what the maintenance protocols are, and also considering the adoption of AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital twins. I mean, I've been in a lot of sessions, this particular RIC, where there's been a lot of discussions about how that is permeating really a lot of what the industry is considering and doing for the future, not only with advanced reactors, but also for the current fleet. And so going on to the next slide, some of the NRC activities with regards to the design in construction is participating in a lot of the discussions and a demonstration project. We have staff not only with the Office of Research, but also the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation where we have an ability to actually work with and sit through a lot of the discussions with the teams that are developing this. And Ashley is going to be discussing that in more depth. And we also have a development of risk-informed, performance-based, technology-inclusive regulatory guides on seismic design and seismic-based isolation for advanced reactors that have been put out for public common as well. And continued engagement with the standards development organizations, that's a very key part of it as well to really make sure that that keeps pace with a lot of these developments. And for you that may have also sat through the Future Focus Research Program, there's activities going on in that area as well as in the University Nuclear Leadership Program. There's also activities there as well and they're on our slides as well. So, and I know that you are waiting to hear from the speakers as I am too, so I will get to it by introducing our first speaker, which is Ashley Finan. And she is the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center and a division director at Idaho National Lab. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing initiatives to provide resources to reactor innovators to test, demonstrate, and conduct performance assessments to accelerate the deployment of nuclear technology concepts. If you want to read her more lengthy biography, it is on the RIC website. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Ashley. All right, good morning. Thank you, Louise, for having me on the panel. I'm glad to be here and I'm really excited to talk about NREC's Advanced Construction Technology Initiative. Let's see, button. So, and I actually have just taken a new role, so I am a week into a new job. It's standing in for the future director of NREC right now, the acting director is Brad Tomer, who's been the COO for NREC. So, and our project manager or program manager on this project is named Christy Williams. So NREC is a DOE-NE program. It was launched in FY20 and its purpose is to accelerate the demonstration and deployment of advanced nuclear energy. We work really closely with GAIN to help industry bridge the gap between research and commercial deployment by leveraging national lab expertise and infrastructure and making those capabilities available to innovators. This is a summary of NREC on one slide. We have some demonstration testbeds for demonstration of micro-reactors inside existing facilities and we're working to modify those facilities and complete them in the next several years to be able to enable those micro-reactor demonstrations. We've been putting in place key experimental facilities that are needed for advanced reactors as well as some modeling and simulation capabilities and key planning tools related to using the labs to NEPA and environmental reviews and to siting of advanced reactors. And then this project I'm gonna focus on is in our area of addressing cost and markets. It's important we think that as we demonstrate advanced reactor technologies, we also pursue the complementary technologies that are needed to help those advanced reactors be scalable and deployable in an economic way. So the Advanced Construction Technology Initiative is focused on improving construction outcomes and schedules and costs. So this first project in that initiative, its purpose is to demonstrate some key technologies that are actually used in other industries but haven't been applied to nuclear and to make them really nuclear ready so that advanced reactors could use them without incorporating undue technology risk or regulatory risk. So you'll see that this project is aimed at really reducing the technology risk and the regulatory risk of applying these technologies to nuclear energy. We are partnered with GE Hitachi on this as well as a number of subcontractors to GE Hitachi. And we're working to demonstrate a vertical shaft excavation technique as well as the use of steel bricks in a cylindrical configuration for a nuclear use and some advanced monitoring and sensors and digital twin technology. So it's a two phase project. Phase one is the prototyping and testing of the steel bricks, optimizing the design of the demonstration, choosing the site and doing a number of other R&D related activities. And that is completing in the next month. And then phase two would come next and there we would be able to do a scale demonstration of the whole construction project. It would be a full diameter, but a reduced height. And that would be about a two to three year project subject to availability of funds and successful completion of phase one. Phase one is going very well and just about to complete as I mentioned. So the team members are listed here. GE Hitachi is the lead on this. EPRI is contributing some work on digital twin and non-destructive examination techniques. The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in the UK is part of the advanced sensors team. Then University of North Carolina Charlotte is focused on the digital twin of the structure. Purdue University is where the steel concrete composite prototype testing has been going on and is going on currently. Modular walling systems is the provider of the steel bricks and then Cotton Engineering and ACON walks are steel bricks fabricators. Black and Beach is the boring technology, construction and site selection contractor. And then we're working closely with the Tennessee Valley Authority as an industry partner, as well as with Ontario Power Generation and Duke Power who are stakeholders who have a great deal of interest in this technology as something that could be used in future deployments at their sites. And then we have some key members of our team who are the rotational employees from the NRC. So this is a little bit about our NRC collaboration. We're able to have this collaboration because Congress really recognized the importance of DOE and NRC collaborating in the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act. And a memorandum of understanding was established between the two agencies to enable collaboration on advanced reactor demonstrations and collaboration through the NRIC program. So through that we have monthly coordination calls with director level folks at DOE and NRC and NRIC. And we've been able to set up rotations where we have really important staff from NRC who are doing rotations with NRIC. So on this project, Fred Sock from the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research is a construction expert. And he is embedded in the project team on this project and really providing invaluable input to help us make sure that as the project advances we're able to incorporate regulatory considerations and identify what sort of guidance is needed or what sort of papers need to be written so that we have this technology ready for use at the end of the project. And then Alan Federer from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation has a broader set of activities that he's working on with NRIC but he has some support to this project as part of that as well and has been a very valuable member of the team to make sure that we're incorporating the kinds of things that NR would find to be important in this project. So vertical shaft construction is part of the concept of this demonstration. And it has the potential to reduce excavation and engineered backfill by a million cubic feet. So rather than using big machines to dig an enormous hole to put in a concrete and steel structure for nuclear, instead you're only excavating the hole that you need to be able to put in the facility. And that's a huge potential savings of funds but also many months of time excavating. So the ultimate application may include a vertical shaft boring machine which you might have seen in the tunneling industry. It's a best practice in the tunneling industry. That'll be an opportunity for nuclear deployments. In the demonstration, we're using a secant and pile construction method because of the cost of mobilizing a vertical shaft boring machine for a small demonstration. And then we'll do inspections and testing of the backfill and of the structure. And this is important because typically when you build a structure, you have access to all sides of it, at least the outside of it and the inside. In this case, we won't have access to the outside of it. So it's new to figure out how to do the inspections on this. We think it's straightforward and can be done but we need to show that it can be done and we need to incorporate the NRC into that process. Then we have the conceptual design for the scale demonstration structure would be a full diameter for a reactor building, a diameter of 110 feet and then just a scale depth of 20 feet with a height of six feet above grade. And we'll have sensors, that's part of the advanced sensors, we'll be able to install sensors to measure the impacts of construction activities on this in order to provide empirical data for future use. The steel bricks that we're demonstrating, they'll be fabricated at a shop and then shipped to the site and then assembled in the field outside of the pit and lowered into the pit. And so that can really reduce the amount of onsite work and it can improve quality control. It's more standardized and has the potential to reduce costs. So these are some pictures of the steel brick prototypes. We've had prototypes manufactured in this project or fabricated and sent them to Purdue from Cotton Engineering. They were filled with concrete and with imperfections for stress testing and non-destructive examinations. So this testing has been going on and it continues and the team is working to measure the strength of the connections and generate key data for the digital twin and for the regulator. And Yusveld might talk a little bit more about this. The digital twin for the project is an important aspect of this and it really, I won't go into detail just in view of time. But it spans engineering, fabrication, assembly, casting the concrete, moving through the testing, the life cycle and then the demolition and disposal. And this is gonna be an important aspect that will allow us to ensure we're capturing data and able to simulate the structure after we've actually put it together. So our engagement actually on this, the nuclear regulatory engagement spans not just the NRC but also the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. CNSC has been participating in regular technical discussions and design reviews to get knowledge about the technologies and their demonstration. I mentioned earlier that Ontario Power Generation is one of the stakeholders interested in using this technology. So the incorporation of the CNSC is very important. And we've really appreciated the partnership of NRC and CNSC on this. That test results are going to be used from the prototype testing at Purdue. Those will be used by GE Hitachi to support a licensing topical report. And then NRC and CNSC will be attending some of the prototype testing this month at Purdue. And NRC and CNSC representatives, if we move to phase two, they'll be able to visit the demonstration site during the installation to view that installation and to understand it. And I think that'll be very informative for regulating these technologies. GE and EPRI have produced a Nuclear Regulatory and Construction Standards Report as part of this project already. And they have some more reports that they're working on as well, including that topical report I mentioned. So the scope for phase two includes selecting the US fabricators of the steel bricks, fabricating the steel bricks and the sub-assemblies and shipping those to site for final assembly into modules and rings. Mobilizing this site and completing all the required permits, excavating the vertical shaft, installing the demonstration scale steel brick containment and reactor building, deploying the sensors and digital twin, testing the structure and collecting data, and then performing inspections and issuing the reports and lessons learned at various stages of the construction of the testing. So our view of a successful outcome here is that the technology is demonstrated at TRL-6 or above, but really thinking that we're retiring regulatory arrests by incorporating the NRC team members as well as incorporating topical reports and other work with the NRC and the CNSC in this project. And retiring key technology arrests, some of the key technology challenges here are that we're taking welds that are usually rectangular welds and then you're putting them into almost triangular welds and going into a structure that's circular and it becomes complicated. So that's one of the key areas where we really need to retire arrests on this project. I think that's my last slide. So thanks very much for your time and attention and I'll go ahead and do you want to introduce Yusveld? Okay, great. And Yusveld, we'll go into some more detail on the project. And thank you. And as you can tell, it sounds like a very exciting and interesting project and making a lot of progress. So our next speaker has over 22 years of experience in the nuclear power industry and academia on commercial nuclear plants and new plant builds, including the ABWR, the ESBWR, VTR and BWRX300. And he's held several technical and managerial positions at GEH Nuclear within the engineering organization. But currently, he is the GEH project manager for the Ontario Power Generation BWRX300 Nuclear Island design and for the Nuclear Research Innovation Center Advanced Construction Technology Project, which has the goal to mature the steel bricks technology for application to containment and reactor build structures. So I'm very much looking forward to his presentation. Thank you, Luis. And welcome, everybody. I'm very happy to be here with this panel. So thank you, Ashley, because you have covered a lot of the base of the Enric ATC project. So my presentation will focus more on the results that we have achieved so far. And how we are planning to use what we learn into actual application. Our ultimate goal is really to start to build new nuclear power plants, small modular reactors that can be built in a cost effective way while maintaining the safety standards. I will not cover this, this go over what Ashley already covered, but just to put it in perspective, if you look at the picture there, the green collar structure would be the containment made out of steel bricks. The blue structure is the reactor building. You can see also the red structure are the wings and there are floors. So all of these would be built using steel bricks entirely in phase two. And all of those would meant to demonstrate the capability to develop cylindrical structures with all the connections to the basemath that is underneath and provides the pressure boundaries for the containment. So while there being application of steel bricks for non-nuclear facilities, the goal here is really to be able to demonstrate and advance the maturation, the technology readiness level for application to a seismic category one containment type of structure. Ashley already covered the objective, so what I would like to focus in this picture, if you look at these steel bricks, that show, the steel bricks shown in the picture is the would be a T type model. I'll get a little bit more in a little bit. But that would be the connections between the containment wall and the basemath. Obviously these are prototypes that are being tested in phase one so they are scaled down for the purpose of testing. And one of the advantages of steel bricks is that they're extremely stiff and therefore allowed for a lot of reduction in thickness with respect to, say, a reinforced concrete type of structure. This in itself is a big advantage by having to be able to afford a smaller dimension for containment reactor buildings and still be able to withstand the loads, such as aircraft impact for reactor building or accident type of conditions for the containment. So that's one of the big values that we see into the steel bricks, but this is also the reason why we needed to scale them down to perform the prototype testing because lab needed to apply certain type of loading to reach certain failure modes that we wanted to test and with the full size we would not have been able to do that. So what are we trying to test? As Ashley said, the project is divided in two phases, phase one, phase two, and then will be actual application outside in construction of a small modular reactor. For phase one, the goal is to develop the design for the construction of phase two, but also to perform prototype testing on steel bricks. And we have developed five different test plans. We consist of five different types of testing which is based on auto plane shear, in-plane shear, biaxial tension, missile impact, and in-plane shear plus auto plane shear. We also have some accelerated corrosion testing. The goal of this is, I would say, is threefold. One is to really confirm and assess the capacity of steel bricks with respect to the code ACN690 that is meant to be applied for analysis and design of steel bricks. The second is really to validate our finite element models that we have developed for steel bricks so that we can use, once they are validated with actual data, we can use them for design and construction application. And the third is to validate and use these results into a licensing topical report which will define the construction and design of steel composite containment vessel with steel bricks like technology or steel composite equivalent type of technology for applications specifically the one that we are submitting shortly in probably a month or so is focused on BWRX-300 application. But I want to stress that the technology itself is now limited to a specific reactor type. So we are currently at the stage of completing phase one and if we, the conference was a couple of weeks later, I would have been able to incorporate all the results that we achieved for phase one testing because in the last, actually week, we completed a significant amount of testing. So when I prepared this presentation, we all had one test completed which was the out-of-plane shear. Ever since, we completed also the missile impact and the in-plane shear. And currently, we are testing as we speak the biaxial tension test and then the very last one, which will be in the next few weeks, it will be the in-plane shear plus out-of-plane shear testing. So, check out the next conference or next year we'll show all the videos and the results are pretty impressive, particularly the missile impact. All of those were recorded and so you can see in very slow motion the resistance of the steel bricks which is quite impressive. So apologies for not having been able to incorporate those videos but there was not enough time. But as I'll cover in the next slide, the results look positive, meaning they successfully met the acceptance criteria that we set for the test plan. And so I feel very optimistic about the completion of successful completion of phase one, which will be in the next month or so with the final design review where all these results will be presented. And as we move to phase two, that will be really the exciting part when we start to build the structure. So what is the timeline for phase two? I'm gonna remain optimistic and say that we're gonna be able to receive an award and a contract in the next few weeks. And so if we start to build start activities in April of this year, the old construction of the containment base mat and reactor building should be completed by the end of 2024. And this is very important because currently the first application for BWX-300 is lined up with Ontario Power Generation in Canada, the Darlington site. And it's lined up to start shortly after that. So in the 2025 timeframe. So this schedule would allow us approximately for each milestone about one year and plus leak time to review the lesson learned and trying to implement and apply them on the actual construction site. So that's why it's very important and we think the Enric phase two project is critical for the success of the steel bricks application of steel composite application for containment. So throughout, you can see in the slide what are the milestones, but throughout the construction we are gonna learn lessons, right? From the fabrication phase. So we are going to try to duplicate as close as possible the plan that we're gonna do on the actual construction for us will be of BWX-300. Meaning we're gonna have multiple fabricators of steel bricks off site fabrication. Why? Because we don't have a supply chain currently and we need to develop then and to come up up to speed and support the demand and the schedule, one fabricators only is probably not gonna be sufficient. So we're gonna look at multiple fabricators and we're gonna learn from the fabrication techniques on what is the most effective way to proceed. What are the downfalls? Because some of these steel bricks will be standard, some of these will have penetration, some of these will have to have reinforcement. So at different stage, during the constructions we have to learn how this is going to line up into the construction sequence at the site. Then we're going to learn what is the best way to transport this module, right? I really want to think about and in my mind, this is the vision is if you have kids, you're familiar with Lego bricks. To me, the vision of a truly modularized structure is to be able to have a steel bricks database. And you know there is a type straight, L type, a T type, fundamental bricks. How you put them together in sub-assemblies is your manual of sequence of construction of a Lego structure. But literally after we have built couple of reactors we will know how many bricks we will need which are in the order of thousands and of which type and where do they go. And you will have your steel bricks shop, you go and you order the steel bricks that are virtually on the shelf, ship it on site and then create the sub-assemblies and then the full modules to be laid into the pit. And the vision at this time is to lay into the pit the full cylindrical structure for each elevation. So we will weld off site, sorry, on site, but off the pit the remaining welds create full cylindrical structure of the lowest elevation from the base mat lay it into the pit, pour concrete, let it solidified, then we will go to the next level, the next level and the next level. And that will allow us to optimize, as was mentioned by Louise, the depth of, and by Ashley, how much the size of the pit that we live to, we need to dig. And this is one of the advantages that we see and we hope to be able to demonstrate. So that's why on all of this step there are lessons learned from how we're gonna manage tolerances, which is gonna be a huge deal, how we are going to optimize onsite weldings. So one of the goals for Enrique is to try to test different welding techniques, different connection types to see what makes the most effective. And then waterproofing, rigging, how we're gonna again lift these big modules and put it in place. All of these will be lesson learned that we will be across and along the way. And as we learn them, we're going to transfer to the actual construction. So the last slide, what are the lessons learned so far? I touch on some of them, but first results of phase one prototype testing. They're being successful and they're meeting the acceptance criteria. What does it mean? Specifically, they're exceeding the ACN690 design capacity and they're matching the prediction of our finite element models. Those were the two key aspect that we wanted to get out of the phase one prototype testing. In fact, on the missile impact to give you an idea, we were predicting actually to get perforation. We did six different specimen testing. The speed of the missile was in the order of 280 meters per second. So quite significant, two pounds. Obviously everything is scaled down because of the safety implication. And we were predicting to have penetration when the missile was to impact the steel bricks in between diaphragm plates and actually in five out of six specimen, they were stopped. Again, demonstrating the significant strength afforded by this type of structure. On the out of plane shear and in plane shear, the design capacity was exceeded in different case by one and half time versus two times, but quite significant to be on the design limit. So the prototype testing are looking very positive and hopefully in the next month we'll be able to complete the remaining test and demonstrate also that the test criteria were met. Supply chain, I touch on it, that's a big deal. It's, we need to rebuild a lot of suppliers and particularly if we in this area when we have a new technology, that's one of the weak points that we need to consider. So actually Eric, it's a great avenue to be able to bring up to speed US fabricators, in this case of steel bricks, but any other technology. And we have already learned and so much by developing the prototypes, including qualification of the weld procedures, qualified welders, what works, what doesn't work. So these are all things that we need to keep progressing for phase two. Another thing related to that is a worldwide environment, units are going to be quite critical. We already had something that we learned the other way where we had the UK fabricators and the US fabricators. And the design was based on metrics system. We couldn't find quite the thickness and the US supply on the US supply chain. And so we had to adjust and modified and this was just one example where addressing the metric that are gonna be used, the units, and aligned them with the country and the supply chain that is available is going to be key. Lastly, I mentioned this, two other key lesson learned. One, tolerance management is gonna be huge. And then having a repair management program as well because we cannot expect not to have to do repairs. And particularly by using new technology, we need to understand how they're going to be implemented depending on what type of repair, where all of these, it's another huge advantage that we want to try to get off and reconno the structure that we're gonna build. I think that's all. Thank you very much. All right, after the RIC, usually right afterwards we start to wonder what the topics will be for next year and listening to that presentation, it sounds like there'll be some videos and all kinds of lessons learned and experience that could probably be discussed at the next RIC. So, our next speaker is a consulting engineer with Westinghouse Electric Company and he has more than 20 years experience in the design, licensing and construction and nuclear power plants. And his duties include the civil structural design of large light water, small modular and advanced reactor designs. And he has authored nuclear industry guidance documents and extensive experience and design analysis of structures to resist earthquakes, tornadoes, explosions and aircraft impact. But he is also a former NRC technical reviewer with experience in licensing of new reactor designs. And looking forward to your presentation. Thank you, Louise. My name is Brett Tagler. Good morning and thank you for coming out on the, as you mentioned earlier, the final hour of the RIC. I see, before I start, I wanted to extend an appreciation or thank you to officer research for putting this sort of concept into the RIC agenda. I think it's very important. I know, and at least in my daily work, construction obviously is a big factor. And so, this kind of engagement, I think is very helpful and ultimately will help the community advance the deployment of these designs. So I'm gonna, actually I have the best talk ever because I can build on my colleagues in front of me because my talk's gonna be on design and construction considerations and conceptual design. So conceptual design, we have to, the biggest task or challenge there is to assess what's available, what kind of Lego bricks are out there, should we do metric or not, what industry guidance is available to us, what, where's the NRC on a number of these various, first of the kind applications as an example. What sort of review or acceptance criteria do we have? These are all factors that go into that thought process. And before I start, Louise, just quick time check, am I? Should I be accelerating in any way? Just, okay, all right. Okay, good to go. All right, okay. So the first bullet really is why we're here today. We've heard a lot about the demand for advanced reactors is increasing. A key factor in that is gonna be in reducing construction costs and schedule. And I think probably the more important fact of there is schedule. Having people on site is probably more costly than the material. And if you can reduce the labor on site, I think that's a significant impact. And that's probably why the industry is interested in the NRC and industry's view on steel bricks as an example. Those kinds of technology will speed construction. And I'm glad to see we're gonna see benefit from that, it sounds like. So I look forward to that. The early, so why the emphasis on conceptual design? Because my experience in conceptual design having been involved in a number of efforts at Westinghouse for both large designs all the way down to micro reactors, typically comes down to, you have a finite amount of resources to go off you pull a team together, multidisciplinary team. For example, I may be a structural representative on that team. The team huddles up in a room for days and comes out with this conceptual design, right? It's actually, it's more complex than that but it's not by much. It's the decisions that come out of that especially in the structural area. We build the, we design the building around the components. And so we have some very real constraints but in addition to just the size of the components or spatial layout, it's how are we gonna construct this building and what systems should we use? Cause it's this conceptual design phase where we start to develop an idea of is this achievable, is it a viable design? Can we keep the costs under a certain threshold? How much of this design is gonna be first of the kind and present maybe a licensing or regulatory risk or challenge? It's these decisions that are also commonly set into the building layout going forward. Typically the conceptual design phase might be if you're familiar with in the construction and the commercial world it's known as a schematic design phase. Typically 25% of your design is done early on in schematic or in this case, conceptual design. So it's not the level of detail where you're looking at what size welds am I using, how many rebars go here? And it's really more of do I need to embed this building? Maybe how deep do I need to go? What construction technology? Do I need vertical boring? Am I gonna excavate the entire site? It's during this phase that those kinds of decisions are made and they're very important. Some of these decisions made early on can really impact overall construction schedule. So that gets to my last point. The informed conceptual decisions should not be arbitrarily made. They need to be well thought out and they're definitely important for ensuring the success of these designs going forward. I have a napkin on here, it's kind of a joke, but it's actually not that big of a joke because if you substitute a whiteboard in there, I think that's truly how conceptual design starts anyway. So as I mentioned, the process is typically brief and informs costs and schedules and for use in financing, talking to vendors, talking to utilities, soliciting interest, making cool graphics that can be used and so the whole point of this process is to again, try to get a sense for project risk, where you might need to do additional research, where you should be starting to think about steel brick technology or precast concrete or reinforced concrete, what sites you wanna look at. Second bullet is, I'm hinting that also in this phase, you typically don't know where you're gonna site. It's, I think, at least in my experience so far, the goal is to come up with a robust design you can almost site anywhere. Again, you're looking for initial phase so you're being fairly conservative with the potential site and you're making wild guesses at construction methods. You have to assess which design codes and standards are you gonna use. Well, especially in the advanced reactor world where there's a strong emphasis on use of modular construction, onsite fabrication, it's important to know where the codes are and the codes have come a long way, by the way, since AP-1000 was licensed, SC or steel plate composite construction is now actually codified. It was not at that time, we've come a long way. What is the conceptual design process? Again, interfacing with other groups, mainly component groups, the layout process is highly iterative. In a recent project I was in, the size of the building was controlled by the size of containment. So it's a parallel process. You have the component group coming in and say, well, the containment, we need a 60 foot diameter and then the next day they'll say, well, we can get it down to 45 and so it's an evolving process. Safety classification assumptions, this is an important point because safety classification can drive construction costs and schedules well. Designing and constructing a safety class one building is significantly more resource intensive than a non-safety building. So going forward in designs, we're trying to leverage some of the industry guidance with respect to licensing modernization process, which I'll get into a second where you can kind of mix non-safety and safety buildings. Cost considerations and I have highlighted here the need for improved tools because also in the conceptual design process, you're trying to keep tabs on costs of one system versus another. Should I make this floor a precast floor system or should I make it rainforest concrete or SC composites or steel bricks? Having an idea of cost as your comparative costs or relative costs between these systems would be helpful and there aren't many tools to do this and I'm just highlighting potential for improvement in general for that. And then as I mentioned, it's refinements, this conceptual design process ultimately ends and you refine yourself to a general basic layout and then going forward from that point, you get into more detail design and the design progresses. So this slide identifies a couple issues that in my view, based on some of the conceptual design projects I've been involved with, these are the ones that impact the design the most and so I argue that they also affect ultimately the design of the plant and the commercial viability of the design. And so for example, embedment method of excavation, these embedment can be based on a number of factors. There's some obvious ones such as you can get, you have an advantage from a seismic motion perspective, you have lower seismic accelerations, the deeper you go. There are complications with that construction, accessibility aspects, as we heard. Aircraft impact is another consideration for, do you try to bury your structure such that you have a more protective design? I wanna, I skipped over a bullet, I think I'm gonna come back to where the second bullet for access for efficient movement of crafting materials. This one's a little bit, it's a qualitative, but it's an observation I've had by, and I'm sure many of you in the room have had who've been involved in construction understand that these buildings are beehives when they're being built. You literally, in a stairwell, and I've been in, like for example, a Vogel, you're in a stairwell and you're actually moving your head so that you're moving around pipe fitters coming up and down and electrical conduits moving around, it is very busy. Access and efficient movement for getting people and materials in and out of that building during construction, I think is a very important factor. This gets to the schedule again. If you have people, if you have a design that's very compact, such you've optimized on let's say material volume, you may have a design that's actually now harder to construct and harder to move around and actually takes longer to build and drive your cost up. Base isolation and equipment skids, this is an idea to reduce costs through reducing the seismic qualification of the equipment on those skids, meaning that base isolation will reduce the seismic demands and therefore I might be able to use, I could lower the seismic testing requirements and hopefully reduce cost of my components. The seismic interaction, this is the, my last bullet gets at consideration of interaction. This would be interactions of building to building. So in AP1000 design we have adjacent buildings, the Turton Building, Rab Waste, the NX Building. They have different safety classifications because of their potential to directly impact the nuclear island under an earthquake. Using some of the more modern guidance put out by NEI, the Licensing Modernization Project, you can do risk informed design where you can put a non-safety building right up against a seismic category one building and demonstrate that under beyond design basis earthquakes that non-safety building will not negatively affect the function of the category one building. The process for doing that is a little bit complex and a little bit, there's not a lot of guidance out there for, the guidance basically says you can do that but then the acceptance criteria for that is less so. So embarking on that kind of an approach might be a bit of a first of a kind but I think the, it's just a consideration I think to think about. Okay, modular construction. This is an important topic because as I mentioned, I think this is a system that modular construction in general is one way to reduce schedule, whether it's precast concrete, steel bricks or steel plate composite, there's a range of options but in the conceptual design phase you have to think how these pieces are gonna fit together, how they're gonna anchor to the basement, the exterior foundation walls, currently the industry codes and standards cover SC wall, steel plate composite walls that are not exposed to corrosive soils and so if you have a foundation that uses this system with SC you're gonna have to, we're gonna have to make a case that we're not gonna have a corrosion problem or how we're gonna deal with corrosion because right now it's not directly covered in the code so you're kind of, again these are thoughts that have to be considered, right now floors and roofs are not directly covered in the codes and standards, it's mainly wall type structures. Now the project that we heard about with the SC, sorry, the steel bricks, that's the kind of work that would advance the knowledge base for the codes and standards to develop and develop comfort level, the NRC, such like Mr. Sock's involvement in that process is important as a regulator can understand how that system works. Field routing of equipment, I'll just cover quickly, I mentioned the number of people moving in and out of stairwells and trades, craft and trades each installing HVAC, electrical, piping, those are typically all field routed systems and they're very costly and they take a lot of schedule. So to the extent we can minimize that through the use of large equipment skids where maybe some of the electrical and piping systems are sort of prefabricated outside of the excavation and then dropped in and basically connected up as another type of system. The last bullet is also important, this gets at schedule, rework in construction is costly, it takes a lot of time to implement corrective actions, identify extended conditions and fix things. So that can be solved through improve training for the onsite trades and craft. All right, and summary, I'll just say that these conceptual designs are important factors for advanced reactor projects and that constructability, modularization, accessibility and improved cost tools are key factors to reducing the construction costs. These early decisions commonly set the design moving forward, so it's important to pay, to put a fair amount of thought into that initial, into this initial process. I think that's it for me. Thank you, Liz. All right. Well, there's certainly a lot to think about with regards to these technologies. Thank you for that presentation and our last speaker has more than 20 years of experience in research and engineering and is a principal project manager in the Advanced Nuclear Technology Group at the Electric Power Research Institute and he manages the engineering design, construction and project execution and optimization research areas to help deploy new power plants around the world and leads the APRI's nuclear research on digital twins. So don't forget if you've got questions to send them in so we're keeping a look at on those, okay? Thank you. Thank you, Liz, appreciate it. Thank you so much for the opportunity to address the audience here. Last presentation for today and as was stated, I'm actually leading the engineering construction research at APRI, it is very important that this time around we do it right. So I really have a big task in front of me all the time is to try to identify technologies and develop the technical basis that get us to the effective and cost reasonable nuclear power plants. We spend a lot of time perfecting the nuclear systems which we should but we really need to prioritize construction, we really need to prioritize design, all these decisions really do matter. 2018 APRI published a report that economic roadmap to deploy new reactors, number one, constructability, number two, civil structural designs, number three, labor and craft. The top three were all related to construction so it's very important that we focus on this area. I appreciate the opportunity to address and be part of the REC here. So the area that I'm leading is looking at three main areas. Number one is looking at construction technologies like steel bricks is one of them. So we're part of this NREC demonstration which has a great idea to de-risk those technologies for the next generation of nuclear reactors. Number two is so we talked about digital twins but I wanna just emphasize the importance of modular construction is getting off the schedule being on the side basically fabricated offsite. Remember the old ways or the typical conventional reinforced concrete has to do with rebars, putting form work and all of that. All those rebars are actually now moving away and being part of the steel plates that actually provide the structural integrity of the system. Digital twin and having a single source of truth that all the construction folks looking at the same progress and looking at the same eliminating the paperwork and finding ways to accelerate the dispositioning of construction defects, very critical. Every day in construction is about million dollars. So if we can optimize the schedule by eliminating the paperwork and make it faster using digital twin and digital engineering that's the way to go. The second bucket is engineering solutions. Brad did talk about the risk informed performance based and also the steel plate composite. Now we have a code. So one of the research that we're doing right now is we're looking at the current standards and we're trying to identify what are the things that are missing in the current standards that need to be inserted in provided that we have the technical basis for to allow us to deploy those technologies in the future and then analysis of systems and components. The advanced reactors the generation for those will operate under almost atmospheric pressure. That what controls the components thickness typically is the pressure. So now you have a thinner components. So now that will make the external hazard like seismic events and seismic calculations to be important. That's why we're focusing on that as well. And the last bucket here is related to advanced construction materials like using large high strength rebars to minimize the defects that could potentially happen in the structures. All these technologies are great. So you have the perfect design. You have you've done all the testing the de-risking but now you have to execute the project and execution the project is critical. Very, very important. So we're putting together a report to inform the industry about all these activities need to happen and you really need to be ready like procurement. We talked about supply chain. We talked about the various design levels all these connections and how those various pieces of the design and the project execution need to interact so that we can get to the final deliver of the project. Project execution is very, very important. You can have the right design but if you cannot execute it correctly we're not gonna get to that point. So there are lots of activities obviously at APRI. I just wanna highlight a few things. I've talked about the innovative construction processes but also the supply chain. We're working on various methods to accelerate how we can fabricate those components and also autonomous advanced reactors. That's a really, really important because the cost related, the second cost is to operate those reactors. So how can we find ways to automate and potentially get into the autonomous of those advanced reactors? And the fourth one which is really, really critical. I've heard it a couple of times at this rig is a separation of the nuclear facilities from the adjacent facilities because as you as the regulator if you focus on the nuclear side which is the most important one that actually gets you the heat and that will actually de-risk the process of licensing and it will improve economics and also enables the non-electric missions and it will simplify the licensing which de-risk of investors to get into advanced reactors. Very important concept. So we're putting together a methodology of how would you achieve this separation between the nuclear facilities and the adjacent facilities so that we achieve the cost effectiveness of those new reactors. I wanna emphasize this project quickly not necessarily for its technical content more so of the really need if we're really serious of deploying those reactors we really need to have more demonstrations to de-risk the technologies and also the design concept that we're focusing on. So the first project, the phase one of this one is we're looking at using high strength large rebars in nuclear construction to declutter the reinforcement and we have more success to have having concrete to kinda go around the reinforcement and minimize the effects. The phase two, although it's allowed in the code to use mechanical splices but we're also trying to enrich the data that it is okay to use mechanical connections to connect rebars. And the phase three is to looking at the understanding of the connection of column to the foundation when you have an earthquake event. You wanna, we wanna make sure that we have a safe failure mode. So you have enough warnings before the failure happens. So some of the testing, again, it is very important to do large scale testing really appreciative of the Enric opportunity to be part of that as well is to de-risk all these technologies. We really need more of these to get us to the next level. There's a lot of talk on this panel about steel bricks, which is a great technology. Now the really great potential also that precast concrete, precast concrete construction also a really great potential to save us time and schedule and Brad did mention this as part of his presentation. So we have this project going on right now and we're gonna publish a report this year on the use of precast concrete. Where can I use the precast concrete in the advanced reactors? What are the challenges? What are the benefits? So just quickly, the cost of material is gonna be more. Precast concrete does cost more in terms of materials but what really matters at the end of the day is the time you spend in the field. If you're saving construction schedule, this what matters, this will have an impact and this document will show a comparison between conventional concrete, precast concrete, the cost of material is more for precast but you could save a lot of time in construction schedule which saves a lot of costs related to the schedule and project. So finally, I just had a couple of bullet points here. This is my final last slide here. We published a report last year on streamlined construction evaluation. That's another really an area that we can do a lot of optimizations. Using performance based methods not to be too prescriptive in the licensing basically as long as I can demonstrate that the construction, the structure can do the job. I don't have to necessarily give you all the details that will get me to that point. So we put together this report to kinda establish a concept of performance based construction evaluation. If I find the defect, is this the end of the world? Can I actually just accelerate it and make it faster by introducing some of those methodologies? Risk informing construction inspections, very critical, do I need to inspect all the construction component? Can I have a performance based risk inform meaning this structural component is important so I gotta make sure that it's 100% correct? This one is I can accept some risk. So these evaluations are important. And finally is efficient skilled labor. As an industry, we really need to work together with institutions to make sure that pipe fitters, welders, APRI has done a supply chain conference last year and will be a conference in April. We're really seeing there is a lot of challenges related to supply chain. Not, you know, we're gonna lose the vocal folks who've done welding if we don't have a next project lined up. So very important for the industry. I talked about large demonstration projects like field welding, underground construction. Those are promising technologies that we need to do risk more and more demonstration. So with that, that's the end of my talk, thank you. So we have now moved on to the question and answer period and I think to give our last speaker time to catch his breath, what I think I'll do since there's been a number of questions that have been provided. I'm just gonna start to the left of me and then just sort of field a question for each, but you can phone a friend or have other people jump in if they have something to contribute as well. How's that? So, Ashley, the, so one significant area of construction risk that has previously come up with modular construction techniques are timeliness and quality issues at fabrication facilities. Does steel brick technology have any key advantages to help reduce risk or simplify these challenges? Thanks for the question. Is this one working? It is, great, okay, it doesn't have a light. So I'm gonna ask Yusuf to add to this because I think you know more than I do about the details here, but it's true that there were issues with quality in the past. There have also been issues around not having standardized approaches to joining the different parts of these advanced construction technologies and not having standardized regulatory reviews for these or codes and standards. And so part of this project certainly is to try to establish some of those standards and establish what a steel brick joining for a nuclear application should look like so that it is replicable. You have to have something to start with to be able to replicate it. But whether steel bricks fundamentally are superior to some of the other technologies in terms of maintaining quality, I'm not sure and I'll ask Yusuf to comment. Yeah, thank you Ashley. So the considerations are as much as possible shifting weldings off site, right? So that's one of the best way to control the quality. And so that's one of the goal we are trying to reach with steel bricks. The other one is even if you have to do it on site, there is still a difference if you can do it outside of the pit versus inside. That's really the part that you're trying to minimize. So are there gonna be challenges? Yes, there are and clearly there are a lot of welds to be had with steel bricks. But if you're successful in focusing them off site on the fabricator facilities and on site in the assembly facility versus in the pit, that would significantly reduce quality issues. The other part which we're trying to test with Eric is different welding techniques, right? I think I'm more concerned about how we can automate the welds in such a way that reduce quality and time versus quantity in itself. Okay, great. And so I would say don't lean back too long because you get the next question, which is a recent, and by the way, I'm sort of picking my favorite questions. It's the prerogative of the session chair. So, but as with all of these, we will address the questions after the rec on our website, the ones we don't get to. So a recent MIT study concluded that most of the reactor construction cost increases were due to fit up issues at the reactor plant site. So how is this vulnerability being mitigated? So thanks for the question. It is, again, spot on, it is a challenge. Let's acknowledge that. So the best way that it is addressed is doing it, right? There is nothing as best we can conceptualize everything, but if we don't try and see if it works, we'll never find out. So best way we are doing it with Eric is through the demonstration phase instead of trying the first time on an actual construction. As I mentioned before, the key part here would be to develop a very solid and rigorous tolerance management plan. I can add to that also. It's, you know, that's one of the powerful things about the twin, digital twin, when you do scanning and try to understand, have you used all your tolerances? So you have a way to capture that laser scanning, send it to the twin and then try to calculate whether you've used all your tolerances so you can correct midway. So that's one of the things that digital twin can do. So the next question, Mr. Brett, is can you offer some perspectives on the use of or negatives of putting the structural design into ITAC? And you might want to tell people what ITAC is. So ITAC is a process within a Part 52 that allows an applicant to perform certain inspections tests and acceptance or develop inspections tests and acceptance criteria for the NRC staff to review and approve such that during construction you can, you have various metrics to confirm the, against the design that was approved. At the, for example, the design certification stage. And I think the question was, do I see my recommendations for that? This will make sure I'm getting the question right. Well, now I have to, I moved away from that. Well, I'll say in general, I think it is a, so. It says, it said the perspectives on the use of the negatives of putting the structural design into ITAC. So for example, for AP1000, we had certain ITAC that related to waterproof membrane performance, things like building geometry, wall thickness, for example, and overall dimensions. I think overall the ITAC process works pretty well. I think the biggest lessons were learned were probably just in clarity in the application on, especially with respect to acceptance criteria, so that the NRC has clear guidance on how to review and inspect and approve those ITAC when they're in the field or when you provide inspection reports to minimize ambiguity. So I think it comes down to, I think there's an important use for ITAC, but I think they need to be clearly written, especially on which codes and standards and even the particular provision within the code that you're basing that aspect of the design on. Okay, thank you. So when technical area that's sort of near and dear to my heart is the digital twin, so there was a question that came in, what level of additional cost would a plant operator need to fully implement digital twin technologies and what is the current acceptability of this technology among the potential nuclear vendors in utilities? It's a great question. So digital twin is a fancy term and really the value comes when you have a use case that makes sense. So we, at APRI, we did research and we published a report late last year. It's available on apri.com. The importance of having the business case to justify the use of digital twins. So for instance, the fit up and the tolerances, the time that can be saved during construction and the potential time that can be saved during construction is amazing. So for this, there is a good business case to use it in construction. The extra cost, there is an extra cost definitely upfront but long-term, in fact, INL did publish a report which was presented at a workshop that we did at APRI that showed that the initial cost will be more but with time, with long-term, the digital twin will pay off. But I just wanna emphasize the importance of identifying the business case and the need. We're not advocating just to go and do a digital twin of everything. It has to make sense. The utilities are interested in it, vendors are interested in it, there is a great value, especially when you're trying to understand a new concept is to have a way to validate the model that you did because you start with assumptions and the field connection between the digital copy and the physical asset will give you that understanding whether the modeling, especially for new concept, do make sense or not. Great, thank you. And this, I'll click right now. Can I just add one point, because there's been a couple of questions relating to modules and of course, I think in the background is AP1000. And I think it's important to note that for AP1000, the modules that were designed and constructed, first licensed, were not, there was no governing code for the application of that type of system. So if you're providing a fabricator or a detailer with drawings without a code to reference for how you do the detailed design, that's a big challenge. And that, of course, has been solved. The codes now have caught up with the Steel Plate Composite System. Fabricators and detailers have a code in front of them where they can perform that function with a significantly lower risk. So I just want to point that out. I think that's an important point, especially for advanced reactor design. It's funny that you had mentioned that, because one of the questions, and I was going to wait until I got back down to you, but it does say, please advise on which codes cover the SC Steel Composites. Would this be in AISC 360 and four? Yeah, this will be AISC N690. I think it's appendix nine. Yeah, thank you, yeah. So that appendix was written using actually a lot of the information that was developed from a lot of the testing at Purdue by Dr. Varma, his crew there. A lot of that information was used as the basis for the standard. And I should also mention that with respect to fit up, I think most of those issues happen early on in design as you might expect doing a first of a kind design. And as the construction of modules progress, those kinds of issues I think were solved. They're usually solved in the field, by the way, for comes down to ingenuity in the field and people getting chains and ratchets and come along, welders are used to that kind of environment. And they usually solve it and get better at it with time. So I'm just pointing out a lot of the issues associated with fit up intolerances, I would feel confident the next time around that that would be a lower risk. Thank you. Sure, and this may be a question that multiple presenters want to weigh into. This is about the, for the pilot project is integrating sensor data, but what is sort of the vision when these get put into a plant as far as monitoring sensors installed in actual facilities, sort of what is the vision for that? So who would like to weigh in? So if I answered the question correctly, they're looking at what's the, how applicable is having sensors be deployed on these? Yeah, I think we're having sat through some of the other sessions in this particular conference. There is a lot of discussion sort of in, the AI machine learning, digital twins, the advanced sensors, how does this all sort of work together? And so, it was discussed how sensors would be part of the pilot, but sort of what is the vision probably for the actual plans? Yeah, so for instance, as part of the INRIC demonstration, we at HAPRI were deploying those sensors to understand the excavation effect on the surrounding soil. That's one aspect. Number two is we're trying to also understand when I designed those smart, when the GE had actually designed those modules and you try to lift those modules, put them in the excavated bit there. How good is your modeling assumptions? So you have a way to capture what's happening in those modules as you lift them compared to the modeling that you did in terms of pilot element, as well as trying to understand the base mat, how flat it is. So we have sensors that can detect the various pressures so it can tell you right on front about the construction quality of the base mat. Those are construction related sensors, so they are not intended to live longer than the construction time, which is about three years, two to three years. But there is an ongoing research right now at HAPRI related to deploying sensors for advanced reactors, especially for high temperature applications. So the research is ongoing and hopefully we'll have the results, I would say early next year. So go ahead. If I may add to it. So I agree with Asan. I think there is a short term application for the plant that we are trying to build right now or shortly and a longer term vision about possible application. And what Asan covers is the short term application. There is something that can be useful and he useful right now. Another aspect is having, has built models, finite element models versus as design. So that's another value that we can gain from it right now. Other applications we can, particularly to artificial intelligence, machine learning and so forth, is something we'll have to build through the times, understand the type of data that we're gonna get. It's not gonna be something ready for tomorrow and how to combine that with the operation or inspection or maintenance of a nuclear power plant. This is gonna take a little bit longer, but I think the step that we're doing with Eric is in the right directions. It's more at this stage of an R&D. Let's learn, let's see how we can use it. Possible application before we jump into, okay, we got it, we can use it. So can I ask you, we have two minutes left, so I think this is a quick question for you, okay, is could steel bricks be mounted on seismic isolators? Is that, you know, seismic isolation? Oh, is it? Is it for? Well, no, I think for you. For me? Or anybody else who wants to weigh in. I vote yes. Yeah, I would vote yes. I mean, I don't see why not. I mean, one of the advantages of steel bricks is exactly, you know, for reactor, they need to have very strong seismic resistance. And so, yeah. Oh, great. Well, according to my watch, it's 11.59 and I wanna thank all of the presenters and the nice thing is is now, you know who the people are that are involved, so, you know, you can reach out and hopefully we'll be able to continue the dialogue and see videos and keep up with all of the good work that's happening, you know, with Enric, you know, on this pilot project. And I do wanna thank everyone who attended and, you know, we're very happy that you chose to come and spend your last session with us, so we're gonna continue, we're gonna continue the dialogue as time goes on and this closes the session. Thank you.