A consortium of six European nuclear and digital stakeholders—EDF, CEA, Dawex, GIFEN, Institut Mines-Télécom, and Sopra Steria—have joined forces to create a sovereign and secure digital dataspace: Data4NuclearX, led by major players in the sector and GIFEN.
The Data4NuclearX project aims to provide the nuclear industry with a trusted digital dataspace that enhances performance, security, and sovereignty of the data shared among the nearly 2,000 companies that make up the nuclear sector in France. This is a critical issue in the context of nuclear expansion, where data exchanges could increase tenfold within five years, reaching an estimated volume of 25 million data exchanges annually.
As part of France’s nuclear revival, Data4NuclearX offers a new solution to promote secure data exchange and support the sector’s growth. It facilitates interaction between nuclear companies, improves the management of complex projects, strengthens interface reliability, and accelerates innovation and digital transformation across the industry.
The Data4NuclearX dataspace aims to:
Ensure each partner has access to reliable data to make timely operational decisions. The exchanged data will cover all processes within the nuclear sector.
- Use common languages to foster cooperation among nuclear companies.
- Maintain data control: each company retains full control over its data and manages access conditions.
- Provide technologies based on European technical standards aligned with Gaia-X principles.
Among the first operational implementations include data exchanges related to equipment manufacturing tracking, enabling faster decision-making and reduced lead times. The expected benefits span the entire supply chain: improved quality, schedule control and traceability, and faster issue resolution.
The project includes a design and planning phase until 2027, followed by a pilot phase focusing on three priority use cases, and a full-scale operational rollout starting in 2028.
Data4NuclearX is supported by the French government under the France 2030 initiative, aiming to ensure mastery of sovereign digital technologies.
The six consortium members contribute with their expertise and concrete solutions:
- EDF leads and coordinates the project, involving its nuclear teams in implementing the initial use cases.
- CEA, with 80 years of nuclear expertise, contributes its knowledge in data semantics and artificial intelligence to develop tools that streamline partner integration, especially for SMEs.
- Dawex brings to Data4NuclearX its Data Exchange solution to distribute or share data products, with trust, security, traceability and in compliance with data regulations
- GIFEN serves as the collaborative hub where nuclear companies work together to digitize processes and exchanges. The creation of a data space fits within this framework and will improve information processing.
- Institut Mines-Télécom and its subsidiary IMT Transfert support prototyping and experimentation through the Data Space Lab, helping scale the data space for the benefit of the entire nuclear sector and its SMEs.
- Sopra Steria brings its expertise in architecture and development to design and implement the specific components required for the dataspace.