Assystem : NAAREA partners with Assystem to create a joint laboratory for digital innovation

25 October 2024

NAAREA and Assystem announce the creation of a joint laboratory, dedicated to exploring emerging and advanced digital technologies and integrating them into NAAREA's digital twin. This laboratory will aim to meet future challenges related to the development of NAAREA's XAMR® nuclear microreactor. It will bri ng together the technical and professional expertise of NAAREA and Assystem, in collaboration with universities, research centres and public institutions.

In just 18 months, NAAREA reached a key step in the development of its microreactor by finalizing the first stage of the digital twin of its XAMR® in partnership with Assystem. Developed on Dassault Systèmes' 3DX platform, NAAREA's digital twin centralizes all of the data pertaining to the reactor, and will be used throughout the project's lifecycle, from its design through to operation and reprocessing.

As digital technologies are constantly evolving, NAAREA and Assystem decided to create a joint laboratory to evaluate, analyse and integrate all of the emerging technologies that could contribute to the deployment, optimization and ongoing improvement of N AAREA's XAMR® digital twin, such as large language models (LLMs), substitution models, the dynamic reliability of passive safety systems, and the Internet of Things (IoT). To do so, NAAREA and Assystems developed a five year strategic roadmap in three areas:

• The integration stages for the main nodes of system tree structures
• The main groups of processes to be integrated into the digital twin
• The main technological building blocks likely to be integrated into the digital twin

The engineering teams of NAAREA and Assystem, as well as the public and private research units that wish to join the joint laboratory, will contribute their expertise, resources and specific skills to this collective project. The laboratory will be based o n the principle of sharing resources, whether material or immaterial, thus allowing each partner to collectively access knowledge and resources that might not necessarily have been accessible to them individually.

The joint laboratory will be led by a strategic steering committee made up of NAAREA's and Assystem's senior management, who will approve the roadmap and funding. A management committee will provide operational oversight for its R&D activities and may be a ssisted by NAAREA's Scientific Board to guide the scientific and technological aspects of the laboratory.