As the International Energy Agency recently noted, “Fresh momentum around the world has the potential to open a new era for nuclear energy.” In the past half-decade, the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical tensions have put the topic of energy security front and center and prompted renewed interest in nuclear plants. Around the world, 60 reactors are currently under construction.
Yet a genuine renaissance depends as much on what already exists as on what gets built next. With roughly 420 reactors currently operating, the bulk of the work is maintenance. In advanced economies, the average reactor is more than 36 years old, a figure that puts operational excellence, not just new builds, at the center of the energy transition.
That maintenance challenge shapes why nuclear power plants attract a level of scrutiny unlike almost any other industrial facility, where even a scheduled outage can make national headlines.
What that coverage rarely captures is the intricate equation that underpins the operation of some of the most complex facilities on Earth. Today, the maturation of digital tools (EAM solutions, engineering software, advanced analytics) is fundamentally reshaping that equation.
Working with data under extreme constraints
For the existing fleet, maintenance is a critical priority. The goal: mobilize plant data for predictive maintenance that can navigate the sector’s many constraints. “A reactor unit shut down for a full day represents €1 million in lost electricity production, which underscores the value of predictive systems for optimizing operations,” researchers Corentin Ascone, Benjamin Verhaeghe, and Frédéric Vanderhaegen noted in a recent publication.
Generic approaches borrowed from other industries, however, cannot simply be transplanted into nuclear. The intrinsic complexity of the equipment, the severity of operating conditions, and the central role of safety demand far more than large datasets to detect or predict a failure.
Even within the sector, structural differences between national fleets are significant. Some countries benefit from highly homogeneous fleets operated by a single utility, which yields gains in data standardization and maintenance practice. But design philosophies and components vary from country to country, making failure modes highly variable.
In Europe, for example, attempts to directly reuse asset management models drawn from American practices typically run into major challenges: differences in design, national regulatory frameworks and operational philosophies.
Building on industry expertise
These challenges make a “co-construction” approach essential: pairing the irreplaceable operational knowledge of plant operators with software partners who genuinely understand nuclear. Octave has worked alongside the nuclear industry for several decades across design, analysis and operations.
EDF illustrates how central this kind of collaboration can become. The French company, the world’s largest nuclear operator, has used Octave Aspect Nuclear Pipe Stress for decades to verify the mechanical integrity of its piping systems against applicable codes and standards.
The tool has become an internal standard, used by several hundred engineers to optimize models, margins and calculation sequences. It contributes to major projects such as Flamanville 3 and Hinkley Point C, as well as to safety reassessments of the existing fleet. Hinkley Point C alone, where EDF is building two EPR reactors, involves “150 km of piping, 2,000 calculations, 300 sensitive calculations,” says Léonard Antoinat, head of calculations and piping at Edvance. “To get there, 55 in-house engineers and 15 external engineers used Octave Aspect day in and day out for four years.”
That central role means the software must pass rigorous scrutiny from both the safety authority and the operator. It is qualified under the rules of the French Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (ASNR) for scientific computation and verified by EDF, which means validation documentation exists for every version of the code.
The expertise accumulated within the nuclear industry feeds the coherence of the digital backbone: tools, models and processes aligned with national specificities, from RCC codes to operators’ own internal engineering practices.
Engineering to the micron
That backbone extends beyond existing plants. It now plays a key role in the construction of next-generation reactors – concepts such as very-high-temperature reactors, sodium- or gas-cooled fast reactors, and the first fusion demonstrators with their associated test loops.
These installations have the potential to transform how energy is produced. They also introduce new materials, extreme thermomechanical conditions, and complex geometries.
The result is a precision imperative difficult to grasp at this scale. “A fusion reactor demands extreme precision,” explains David Wilson, Principal Metrology Engineer at the ITER Organization. “We work on a site hundreds of meters long while holding tolerances to a tenth of a millimeter. The machine itself weighs 23,000 tonnes, measures 28 meters in diameter and 29 meters in height. At the same time, magnet alignment must hold to one millimeter, and the interface where conductors are assembled must respect a tolerance of 100 microns.”
Here too, working with specialist partners makes a decisive difference. ITER’s metrology team relies on a range of scanning equipment – large-volume scanning devices as well as portable scanners for close, detailed work on individual components – paired with the accompanying software that forms an integral part of the process. Together, these tools make it possible to identify any deviation, required repair, interference, collision risk, or assembly incompatibility before it becomes a problem, reducing both costs and delays in one of the most demanding engineering projects in history.
As the world seeks to decarbonize without sacrificing growth, innovative reactors represent one of the most promising paths forward. Digital technologies will be indispensable to that revolution – and those who can bridge deep nuclear expertise with mature software capability will be among its most important enablers.
