Abstract
Demand for carbon-free electricity is driving new growth in the nuclear power industry, and lifetime extension of the existing fleet is important to energy security while new LWRs and advanced reactors are being deployed. Operating lifetimes can be extended through reduced conservatism in analysis methodologies. In this work, a high-fidelity software system is demonstrated utilizing advanced high-fidelity multi-physics methods for calculation of a detailed fission neutron source distribution, linked to a state-of-the-art radiation transport method with multiple various reduction strategies, to calculate best-estimate fluence quantities anywhere within the reactor vessel. Various modeling approximations are evaluated, and high-performance computers are used to test the software and demonstrate feasibility of applications.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management, ANFM 2025 |
| Publisher | American Nuclear Society |
| Pages | 822-831 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780894482267 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2025 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 2025 Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management, ANFM 2025 - Clearwater Beach, United States Duration: Jul 20 2025 → Jul 23 2025 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management, ANFM 2025 |
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Conference
| Conference | 2025 Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management, ANFM 2025 |
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| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Clearwater Beach |
| Period | 07/20/25 → 07/23/25 |
Funding
This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, award number DE-FOA-0002783. The authors acknowledge the support provided by the Shift development team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This research leveraged existing VERA models and computational resources provided by the VERA Users Group which has been supported by both Westinghouse and TVA for the public release of the Watts Bar 1 data through CASL. This research also utilized the high-performance computing resources at Idaho National Laboratory [19], which is supported by the Office of Nuclear Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Science User Facilities under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517, and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (https://www.olcf.ornl.gov) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.
Keywords
- Excore
- Fluence
- Monte Carlo
- Shift
- VERA