Obsidian/Presentations/20251215-Emerson-Pres/actual-presentation-outline.md

# Presentation Outline: ERLM Presentation

Audience:
- Engineering PhD students 
- Dr. Cole,
- Potentially other faculty members.

Presentation Style:
Proposal, Assertion Evidence

## SLIDE 1: HOOK

### Message
**THE UNITED STATES STANDS ON THE PRECIPICE OF A SEVERE
ENERGY CRISIS** 

1. We're looking down the barrel of a severe energy shortage
   with the introduction of data centers for AI buildout
2. The cheapest way to build new power right now is natural
   gas combined cycle power plants
3. We also have a climate crisis, which nat gas definitely
   will not help with
4. The only baseload power solution we have to meet this
   demand is nuclear power

*BUT NUCLEAR POWER IS VERY EXPENSIVE TO OPERATE* 

1. Nuclear power is actually really cheap when it comes to
   fuel
2. What makes nuclear power expensive is capital and
   operating costs.
3. Capital costs are being solved by new modular reactors
4. Labor costs today actually get worse figuring modular
   reactors. Reason being same staff required for different
MWh
5. This is the challenge we're going to take on. By making
   autonomous systems that are safe, we can eliminate
reliance on human operators

### Presentation Strategy

1. First, present a graph on energy consumption estimates in
   US in a graph.
2. Then, show the LCOE of different forms of energy
   production. Highlight the relative cost of labor and
operating costs.
3. LCOE costs expect large nuclear reactors. Modular
   reactors on usually a third of the power, so labor costs
are a big deal.
4. Bullet ending, we need to reduce labor costs of advanced
   nuclear power

## SLIDE 2: STATE OF THE ART

### Message
**Modern nuclear reactor operation is highly prescriptive
and labor intensive**

1. We've been talking about labor, who's in the reactor
   room? Usually a senior reactor operator, and 2-3 reactor
operators. Usually there's a chemist floating around too. 
2. It's this staffing, 24/7/365
3. Reactor operators are extensively trained individuals.
   They have to train for multiple years and pass extensive
and recurrent examinations.
4. Reactor operator jobs aren't always super attractive
   jobs. The work is somewhat monotonous, and requires
individuals to usually live in very rural locations.
5. What is the work? Well, it's extremely prescriptive
   operations manuals. Nuclear reactors are so highly
regulated and capital intensive that procedures and their
creation happen in the design stage, before reactors are
built. Safety is ensured at the design stage.
6. Thus, we're using humans basically as controllers for
   highly prescriptive tasks.
7. What are humans really good at? Well for the most part,
   general intelligence. Humans can use judgement and adapt
   to situations.

*But, human operators in nuclear reactor operating rooms are
trained and instructed to follow strict procedural
guidelines.* 

8. There's also evidence that humans are actually not very
   good at being controllers.
9. Humans have very limited baud rates. We can only perceive
   so much information at a time, and the probability of
human error increases dramatically when we perceive an
emergency and are overwhelmed. 
10. Enter, the whole damn field of human factors
    engineering. We bend over backwards to design control
rooms and operating procedures to minimize the possibility
of human error. This takes a lot of time and is expensive to
implement.

### Presentation Strategy

1. First, show a picture of a reactor operating room, and
   explain who the people are inside.
2. Explain how these operators are trained, the
   qualifications necesssary
3. What are they actually doing in here?
4. Split screen with reactor design photo. Show that there's
   a wall between them.
5. introduce point and details afterwards
6. Talk about how designing these procedures, building these
   control rooms, and training these people is extremely
expensive

## SLIDE 3: LIMITATIONS

### Message
These are going to just be a summary of the limits.

### Presentation strategy
Basically just a bulleted list of the limits.

## SLIDE 4: RESEARCH APPROACH

### Message
**We will create high assurance autonomous control systems
by breaking down the problem into smaller steps** 

1. One does not go from zero to hero easily with these
   systems.
2. Instead, we're going to create a *chain of proof* that
   our system is high assurance
2.1. We're ACTUALLY going to start by explaining we'll use
hybrid control systems
    What is a hybrid system? well it's a system with both
continuous dynamics and discrete dynamics. This is a system
that both flows and jumps!.
3. We'll start with the procedures. We'll take the natural
   language and turn them into FRETish requirements
4. We can do realizability checks at this point
5. We take the requirements from FRET as temporal logical
   statements, and move to the next step
6. We take our temporal logic statements, and use reactive
   synthesis tools to break them down into discrete automata
7. These are our switching behvaior between continuous
   modes
8. Then, once we have this automata, we have two things:
    1. We have the switching behavior with the boundary
       conditions
    2. We have a map of how one mode goes to another mode.
9. At this point, we will build individual controllers for
   each of the discrete modes
10. To ensure the continuous dynamics actually satisfy
    boundaries between states, we will use a couple of
techniques from formal methods.
    1. Reachability. Reachability will ensure that our input
       and output conditions only satisfy the discrete
    transition boundaries that we define.
    2. Barrier Certificates. These will ensure that on the
       interfaces, we won't develop zeno behavior

*Each of these links together is what will allow us to prove
that the whole system satisfies requirements.* 

### Presentation Strategy
This isn't really going to be one slide. Instead, I'll
present an arrow from left to right about what the steps
are, and dive into each subpiece for a slide, then jump back
out to the original slide.

The arrow should be from current operational procedure to
autonomous hybrid control system. The steps should be
- requirement synthesis in FRET
- Reactive synthesis in STRIX or similar
- building individual control modes
- badda bing we're there.

## SLIDE 5: METRICS OF SUCCESS

### Message
**In order to evaluate the progress of this research, we
need to have a way to measure progress**

1. This work is trying to make a real impact on building
   autonomous control systems in nuclear power. Because of
this, the relevancy to industry partners is what's most
critical.

*To measure success, we're going to use technology readiness
levels*

1. We're shooting for TRL 5.
2. TRL 3 is critical function and proof of concept. This is
   individual components working in isolation. If we can
bumble through each of these steps in a hacky way, I'll call
that TRL 3. This isn't necesarily a flushed out control
system.
3. TRL 4 is Laboratory Testing of Integrated Components.
   This is a bench top simulation of a complete hybrid
autonomous control system. This includes a start up and
shutdown procedure, and load following with checks for xenon
poisoning and an ability to handle component failures.
4. TRL 5 is Laboratory testing in Relevant Environment. This
   is TRL 4, plus putting it on the Ovation control system
instead of a purely code (MATLAB / PYTHON) simulation.

### Presentation Strategy

Show a TRL timeline, With TRL 3, 4, 5 arrows. Insert
Pictures along each step talking about what is what

## SLIDE 6: RISKS AND CONTINGENCIES

### Message
**Possible challenges will be identified early and have
planned mitigations** 

1. Computational tractability
    - It might be really hard to generate these automata and
      do reacability
    - Exponential scaling with specification complexity
    - Early indicators are synthesis times >24 hours, very
    large automata, etc.
    - Contingency is we can reduce scope to just a startup
    sequence
    - We can exploit time / scale separation of reactor
    dynamics too, and also use the high performance compute
    at CRC

2. Boolean guard conditions may not map cleanly to
   continuous guard conditions
   - early indicator: Continuous modes can't be built ot
   reach transition boundaries, and safety regions can't be
   expressed as polytopes.
   - contingency: Restrict to polytopic invariants where
   certain states are conservatively ignored. Sucks and
   requires manipulation but could get the job done.

3. Procedure Formalization is not within reach yet.
    - early indicator is we have a really hard time forming
      complete specifications in FRET from written
    procedures or synthesizing automata
    - contingency is we document the taxonomy and figure out
      what's missing to get us there. What is missing from
    the written procedures? This becomes a research
    contribution.

### Presentation Strategy

Basically just top and bottom comparison of risk, and what
the contingencies are


## SLIDE 7: BROADER IMPACTS

### Message
**Automating nuclear reactor control is a
billion-dollar-a-year problem**

1. We need a lot of energy
2. The only clean baseload option is nuclear power
3. If we build advanced nuclear to meet this need, operating
   costs are expensive

*But automating control can reduce operator burden, and
significantly reduce operating costs.* 

### Presentation Strategy
Basically copy over the one slider I made from earlier for
the emerson CEO visit.

## SLIDE 8: MONEY SLIDE

### Message

### Presentation Strategy