Expert system applications to nuclear power for enhancement of productivity and performance

Expert system technology has matured enough to offer a great deal of promise for a number of application areas in the electric utility industry. These applications can enhance productivity and aid in decision-making. Two parallel efforts are being performed at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to help the electric utility industry take advantage of expert system technology. The first effort is the development of expert system building tools which are tailored to electric utility industry applications. The second effort is the development of expert system applications. These two efforts complement each other. The application development tests the tools and identifies additional tool capabilities which are required. The tool development helps define the applications which can be successfully developed. The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the tool and application development work which is being performed at EPRI for the electric utility industry. (orig.)