Novel Computational Approaches to Nuclear Reactor Simulations for Improved Safety and Design

Nuclear reactors in various forms are increasingly prominent in the context of net zero. However, stringent safety standards and advanced reactor designs necessitate ever-greater certainty and understanding of reactor physics and operation. As physical experimentation becomes more expensive, nuclear engineering relies increasingly on high-fidelity simulation of reactors.

This project aims to provide the basis of new computational approaches in nuclear engineering which are both substantially cheaper and more stable than present multi-physics approaches. Traditional methods tend to have one tool fully resolve one phenomenon, pass the information to another tool which resolves a second phenomenon, and then pass this updated information back to the first tool and repeat until the results converge. This project hopes to explore a slightly simpler approach, where information is exchanged between different solvers before each has fully resolved its own physics, extending this to many of the phenomena of interest to a reactor designer. The final result is anticipated to transform the nuclear industry’s approach to multi-physics calculations and greatly accelerate our ability to explore and design more advanced nuclear reactors.