Working to Automate Nuclear Plant Operations

about operations from a control systems perspective,” Fortier says.

Annaswamy advises Fortier on supervisory control system framework and execution. Fortier has also been taking classes related to control systems related classes to build a foundation in the discipline. Curtis Smith, the former director for INL’s Nuclear Safety and Regulatory Research Division, and now KEPCO Professor of the Practice of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT NSE, is Fortier’s other co-advisor.

A Step-by-Step Progression Toward Autonomy
Fortier clarifies that the operations systems she’s designing will incorporate a gradual and systematic move toward autonomy so as to build trust with users. “When we introduce an automated procedure that walks you step by step through what you would be doing anyway, it is reassuring and builds trust,” Fortier points out. Her doctoral work focuses on incorporating objective-oriented operations where a control system can create the sequence of events needed to reach the objective, rather than follow a predetermined operating procedure.

Another point of reassurance is that Fortier is developing automation based on a process called finite state automata, which, unlike AI, is very transparent in its execution. The advantages of finite state automata, which she also studied extensively during an internship at INL in summer 2024, is that it’s a discrete event system. This means that every move in the automation framework is event-driven — if this happens, do that — so it adjusts for current conditions in the plant and transitions between various states or events very clearly. It’s addressing a complex problem through conventional automation, not AI-driven automation. “We’re not using a data-driven statistical approach like machine learning because we do not yet have the tools to validate the operation of such systems,” Fortier says.

Future Impact
So promising is Fortier’s work on developing automation for nuclear plants that she was one of the winners of the 2025 edition of the Innovations in Nuclear Energy Research and Development Student Competition from the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program. As a 2026–2027 MathWorks Engineering Fellow, Fortier will continue advancing this work.

Using the nuclear plant automation program on next-generation equipment will deliver necessary traction in developing and deploying commercial microreactors.

But first will come the work of scaling the supervisory control system, borrowing from insights gained from work on a small aspect of control. Fortier is excited about the road and the possibilities that await. “The collaborations with other people, and the relationships we have established with stakeholders, have really helped make an impact and supported the relevancy of the work,” she says. “Sometimes when you’re stuck in your own bubble, that outside perspective is really useful.”

Poornima Apte is an engineer turned freelance B2B technology writer. The story is reprinted with permission of MIT News.