ISL Acquires Important Nuclear Digital Engineering Tool With Multiple Applications in Other Sectors

SAN DIEGO, July 1, 2022 (Newswire.com) - Information Systems Laboratories, Inc. (ISL) announced the acquisition of the assets of Applied Programming Technologies, Inc. (APT), a digital engineering leader in nuclear power. ISL acquired, among other assets, APT's flagship digital engineering code, Symbolic Nuclear Analysis Package, better known in the industry as "SNAP." SNAP is the only digital engineering tool that permits a user to model empirically and visually a planned or operating nuclear power plant steam supply system (NSSS). With SNAP, a user may evaluate the consequences of design choices, safety considerations, operating parameters and rates, and maintenance among many other scenarios. SNAP is compatible with all the leading nuclear industry thermal hydraulic and neutronic codes, such as RELAP, TRACE, and PARCS, and can create a digital engineering model of a NSSS using the inputs from any of those codes. ISL acquired, in addition to SNAP, all of the SNAP "plug-ins" that permit those and other codes to be modelled in a digital environment.

"This is a key and momentous acquisition for ISL's continued growth and future as the leading digital engineering firm in nuclear, national defense, and consumer products. What's more, with SNAP we will soon be introducing a full range of digital engineering products that serve several sectors," Joe Guerci, ISL's President and Chief Executive Officer, said.

Jason Williams, the Vice President and Division Manager of the Energy, Space & Risk Management group acquiring SNAP, echoed this strategic view, commenting that "SNAP will make ISL a digital engineering leader in nuclear, cyber security, pipelines, and other systems that can be modelled mathematically. The real beauty to this tool for digital engineering is that it allows a designer or operator to visualize and corelate the modelling data in real time to the consequences of limitless scenarios, design choices, environmental events, and about any other technical alternative or event fact pattern that one can conjure."

This acquisition also realizes a vision set out 25 years ago by two ISL employees, now retired, spouses Ben and Terry Gitnick. Ben and Terry, in conjunction with colleagues Nick Newman and Bill Grush began developing a tool in the late 1990s to represent complex thermal-hydraulic systems symbolically and to display the system layout. They developed the Java-based preprocessor that imports a RELAP5 input deck and graphically displays the model layout. In parallel, Ken and Doreen Jones, APT's owners until the acquisition, developed the Java-based processor that graphically displays the analysis results. Government agencies and the commercial industry adopted this Java-based software, now known collectively as SNAP, which over the intervening 25 years has matured into the leading nuclear modelling, simulation, and digital-engineering tool. ISL is delighted to add SNAP and APT's other products, as well as the highly talented APT team that has nurtured the iteration of SNAP, to its own product and service lines, continuing to build upon the joint ISL and APT 25-year legacy.

"The synergistic opportunities created by this acquisition are staggering," Mr. Williams observed. "ISL anticipates expanding the reach of SNAP into other sectors and combining it with the Corporation's proprietary artificial intelligence systems, which will allow users to explore scenarios beyond those that the human mind can foresee," he said.

ISL is the leader in high-fidelity modelling, simulation, digital engineering, advanced signal processing, and MIL-SPEC-, ISO 9001-, and quality systems-based manufacturing. Learn more at https://www.islinc.com.

Contact: Jason Williams
Vice President & General Manager,
Energy, Space & Risk Management Division
8130 Boone Boulevard, Suite 500
Tysons Corner, VA 22182
(703) 269-3611

Source: Information Systems Laboratories, Inc.