SRNL awarded AI-powered environmental cleanup projects through DOE’s Genesis Mission 

As part of DOE’s landmark Genesis Mission, the SRNL-led projects directly support critical national security and environmental stewardship goals for both DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). By uniting over 70 years of expertise in nuclear sciences with its unique, site-specific datasets, the laboratory is developing first-of-its-kind AI models. These tools are designed to solve complex challenges in environmental remediation, waste management, and infrastructure resilience — ultimately safeguarding national security assets while yielding over $150 billion in lifecycle cleanup savings.  

“SRNL has built decades of expertise tackling complex environmental cleanup and nuclear materials challenges,” said SRNL Director Johney Green. “As we embark on the Genesis Mission, we are eager to harness this depth of expertise in collaboration with our partners across national laboratories, industry, and academic institutions. By integrating our longstanding scientific knowledge with emerging AI capabilities, we are accelerating discovery in ways that will strengthen our national security, environmental, and energy missions.” 

SRNL will lead the following projects:  

The VITA-SCALE project, led by SRNL’s Nathan Morgan, leverages physics-based AI to accurately predict how nuclear waste behaves during vitrification at full scale. Vitrification, the process of converting waste materials into glass, is used by DOE for long-term storage. VITA-SCALE overcomes the limitations of small-lab analyses and steady-state models, and accelerates DOE cleanup, reduces costs, and improves safety with plans to open-source its models for broader innovation.  

The SCOPE project, led by SRNL’s Tom Danielson, uses artificial intelligence, chemistry and physics-based modeling to more accurately predict the behavior of radioactive liquid waste during treatment. This improved understanding can help prevent costly process disruptions, such as unexpected solids formation, reducing operational risk while improving process efficiency.

SRNL will also partner on a project led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a project led by Vanderbilt University.

The goal of the Phase I RFA awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation, or generate new scientific insights.   

Learn more about the DOE Genesis Mission initiative project awards here and the Genesis Mission at SRNL here. 

SRNL Director Johney Green and computational scientist Tom Danielson attended the Genesis Mission Summit on July 22, 2026. 

Savannah River National Laboratory is a multi-program federally funded research and development center managed and operated by Battelle Savannah River Alliance for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. 

EM transforms the nation’s environmental liabilities into opportunities for innovation, job creation, and economic growth, while ensuring safe, secure and prosperous communities across America. For more information, visit energy.gov/em.