Microsoft Teams Up With Idaho National Laboratory To Speed Up Nuclear Licensing Using AI

Idaho National Laboratory said it will use a Microsoft-built tool powered by Azure AI to help create key engineering and safety reports needed for nuclear power plant permits and licenses.

Microsoft (MSFT) announced on Wednesday that it has teamed up with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to use the tech giant’s Azure cloud and AI technology to figure out how the nuclear permitting and licensing application process can be sped up. 

“This is a big deal for the nuclear licensing process,” said Jess Gehin, associate laboratory director for Nuclear Science and Technology at Idaho National Laboratory. “Introducing AI technologies will enhance efficiency and accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.

Microsoft’s stock edged 0.4% lower after the opening bell on Wednesday despite getting price target hikes from Mizuho and Cantor Fitzgerlard. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the company dipped to ‘neutral’ from ‘bullish’ territory a day ago. 

The national lab said it will use a Microsoft-built tool powered by Azure AI to help create key engineering and safety reports needed for nuclear power plant permits and licenses. It explained that these reports are normally complex, time-consuming, and costly to produce, as they require gathering technical and safety data from many different sources. 

INL said the new AI tool will speed up the process by helping to organize and draft documents more efficiently, adding that the new technology wouldn’t analyze the data itself but instead automate the writing of licensing documents, which would then be reviewed and verified by human experts. 

The new tool would be built to meet the requirements of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Department of Energy (DOE), the lab said.

Ahead of the company’s second quarter (Q2) earnings on July 30, Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz raised the firm’s price target on Microsoft to $540 from $500 with an ‘Outperform’ rating, according to TheFly. 

Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerlard hiked its price target on the stock to $581, up from $512, with an ‘Overweight’ rating. Both pointed to Microsoft’s AI business driving gains in the second quarter. Microsoft is also among Wedbush’s top tech stocks for the earnings season.

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