Abstract
The System Analysis Module (SAM), developed at Argonne National Laboratory and by collaborators at other organizations, is for advanced non–light water reactor safety analysis. SAM aims to provide fast-running, modest-fidelity, whole-plant transient analysis capabilities that are essential for fast-turnaround design scoping and engineering analyses of advanced reactor concepts. To facilitate code development, SAM utilizes the MOOSE object-oriented application framework, its underlying finite element library, and linear and nonlinear solvers to leverage modern advanced software environments and numerical methods. SAM aims to solve tightly coupled physical phenomena, including fission reaction, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and thermal-mechanical responses in advanced reactor structures, systems, and components with high accuracy and efficiency. This paper gives an overview of the SAM code development, including goals and functional requirements, physical models, current capabilities, verification and validation, software quality assurance, and examples of simulations for advanced nuclear reactor applications.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1883-1902 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Nuclear Technology |
| Volume | 211 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2 2025 |
Funding
The SAM code development and applications has been primarily supported by DOE NEAMS program under DOE contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 for work performed at Argonne, contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517 for work performed at INL, and contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 for work performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Additionally, it has received a wide range of funding sources, including the Technology Commercialization Fund, the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy industry funding opportunity announcement awards, the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear, Argonne Laboratory Directed Research and Development, and the NRC. This paper was created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, operator of Argonne. Argonne, a DOE Office of Science laboratory, is operated under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The SAM code development has had many additional contributors, with important contributions from Argonne student appointees Kazi Ahmed, Andrew Klingberg, Ishak Johnson, Michael Gorman, Jin Li, Aaron Huxford, Huihua Yang, and INL MOOSE team members Logan Harbour, Andrew Slaughter, and Guillaume Giudicelli. The SAM development has also benefited from the discussions and feedback received from many key collaborators and stakeholders, including Richard Martineau, Thomas Fanning, Tanju Sofu, Thanh Hua, Tingzhou Fei, Joseph Kelly, Steve Bajorek, Tarek Zaki, Brandon Haugh, etc. The authors would like to acknowledge the support and assistance from Mustafa Jaradat, Sebastian Schunert, and Javier Ortensi of INL in the multiphysics simulation of the pebble bed HTGR. This paper was created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, operator of Argonne. Argonne, a DOE Office of Science laboratory, is operated under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Keywords
- SAM
- advanced reactors
- safety analysis
- systems code