Meet Praadhyumn Indaana, 17, whose AI cut nuclear heat-limit error from 63% to 5.5%; he won $50K

Praadhyumn Indaana, the 17-year-old Montvale, New Jersey student (Image Credit: Davidson Institute) A better understanding of how much heat a nuclear reactor can safely handle could have implications far beyond a single engineering calculation. For 17-year-old Praadhyumn Indaana of Montvale, New Jersey, that challenge became the focus of an eight-month research project combining physics and artificial intelligence. According to the Davidson Institute, which named Indaana a 2026 Davidson Fellow, his physics-guided neural network reduced the average prediction error for critical heat flux from about 63% with conventional formulas to 5.5%. The work earned him a $50,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship and recognition for a project aimed at improving predictions of an important nuclear-reactor operating limit.Why heat matters inside a nuclear reactorIn a nuclear reactor, water plays a critical role in removing heat from fuel rods. As the water boils against the fuel rods, it carries heat away. But there is a point at which the boiling process can no longer remove heat effectively. This threshold is known as critical heat flux, or CHF. Going beyond this limit can cause the cooling process t...