Supporting Multi-Physics Workflows for Advanced Nuclear Reactor Simulations

The mission of the US Department of Energy‘s Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program is to apply, deploy, and support state-of-the-art predictive modeling and simulation tools for the design and analysis of current and future nuclear energy systems using computing architectures ranging from laptops to high performance computational facilities. The availability of the NEAMS ToolKit has enabled transformative scientific discovery and insights otherwise not attainable or affordable. It has accelerated both the solutions to existing problems and the deployment of new designs for current and advanced reactors. However, as the fidelity of these tools increase, so do both their computational resource requirements and the level of expert knowledge required to apply them. This correlation is specifically true when incorporating multiple physics within a simulation workflow. Our proposal aims to improve the ease of defining multi-physics workflows for advanced nuclear reactor simulations. It focuses on four key areas: geometric modeling and visualization of the reactor core, creation and manipulation of simulation information, including material and boundary conditions, through an intuitive graphical user interface, generation of acceptable discretizations of the core model when needed, and generation and execution of the simulation with the ability to visualize the results. The approach integrates the Computational Model Builder (CMB) framework, an open source graphical user interface (GUI) framework for developing simulation workflows, with the NEAMS workbench, an initiative in NEAMS whose aim is to facilitate the transition from conventional tools to high fidelity tools via a common user interface. During Phase I, Kitware will develop the following. An intuitive GUI-based session within CMB for defining reactor core models, the ability to define a neutronics simulation based on DIF3D, which is developed at Argonne National Labs. The set of workflows in Phase 2 would expand this to include higher fidelity neutronics codes such as Proteus as well as CFD codes such as SAM and Nek5000 and visualization of the results of the simulation. Throughout this project, we intend to interact with NEAMS Workbench developers and solicit feedback from both end-users and other developers from NEAMS and the nuclear industry to guide our efforts. All of the software developed in this project will be available under a permissive open-source license. Beyond the nuclear energy industry, Kitware aims to reduce barriers and enable manufacturers of all sizes to tap into HPC-based simulation, with the ultimate goal of advancing the manufacturing capabilities of U.S. industry. This will increase market competitiveness for manufacturers, which are significant drivers of R&D in the U.S.