This review surveys evidence on artificial intelligence across the nuclear engineering lifecycle—covering nuclear datasets and computational infrastructure, surrogate and physics-informed modeling, digital twins, monitoring and prognostics, optimization and control, and trustworthy AI—reporting that learning-based methods can accelerate high-fidelity calculations, extract information from multivariate measurements, and support decisions in reactor operation, maintenance, waste management, and environmental assessment, while exposing recurring limitations such as scarce abnormal-condition data, differences between simulated and physical systems, uncertain generalization, and incomplete evaluation of downstream decisions, and arguing that progress depends on assessing complete AI-enabled wor
This review surveys evidence on artificial intelligence across the nuclear engineering lifecycle—covering nuclear datasets and computational infrastructure, surrogate and physics-informed modeling, digital twins, monitoring and prognostics, optimization and control, and trustworthy AI—reporting that learning-based methods can accelerate high-fidelity calculations, extract information from multivariate measurements, and support decisions in reactor operation, maintenance, waste management, and environmental assessment, while exposing recurring limitations such as scarce abnormal-condition data, differences between simulated and physical systems, uncertain generalization, and incomplete evaluation of downstream decisions, and arguing that progress depends on assessing complete AI-enabled wor