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Topic Name: Argonne's nuclear energy research moves into new territory, greater reliance on computer simulation
Category: Nuclear
Research persons: Argonne National Laboratorys' Research Team
Location: Argonne National Laboratory, United States
Details
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne
National Laboratory is taking its nuclear energy research into new territory
– virtual territory that is.
With the recent arrival of the new IBM Blue Gene/P and the lab’s
development of advanced computer models, Argonne has a critical role in making
it possible to burn repeatedly nuclear fuel that now sits as waste, thus closing
the nuclear fuel cycle and reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation.
The move toward greater reliance on computer simulation and modeling to
conduct nuclear energy research is a progressive trend seen in other areas of
scientific research supported by DOE.
"High-speed supercomputers are increasingly tackling difficult problems
that could once be addressed only in a laboratory setting," Argonne
Director Robert Rosner said.
"The traditional approach to developing nuclear energy technologies is
to do a bunch of experiments to demonstrate a process or reaction," said
Mark Peters, deputy to the assistant laboratory director of applied science and
technology and Argonne’s program manager for the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership. "What Argonne is doing is creating a set of integrated models
that demonstrate and validate new technologies, using a smaller number of
experiments."
Moreover, "advanced simulation can greatly reduce facilities' costs by
allowing us to better identify and target the physical experiments which
underlie their design," said Andrew Siegel, a computational scientist at
Argonne and the lab’s nuclear simulation project leader.
Siegel and a team of Argonne computational scientists are in the throes of
refining computer codes that will eventually be used to conduct the underlying
scientific research that will support the development of next generation nuclear
systems such as advanced fast reactors, Siegel said. "We will use advanced
simulation to improve and optimize the design and safety of advanced fast
reactors," he said.
The Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) design, which was born at Argonne, is a key
part of President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a strategy that
will significantly reduce the radioactivity and volume of waste requiring
disposal and reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. SFR designs are safe,
capable of reducing the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste, and economically
competitive with other electricity sources.
Using internal lab funding initially and GNEP funding more recently, Argonne
computational scientists are designing a modern suite of tools called SHARP –
Simulation-based High-efficiency Reactor Prototyping, Siegel said. The SHARP
toolkit is a collection of individual software components that digitally mimic
the physical processes that occur in a nuclear reactor core, including neutron
transport, thermal hydraulics and fuel and structure behavior, Siegel explained.
SHARP has been developed to fully leverage Argonne’s new Advanced
Leadership Computing Facility, which is made up of the Blue Gene/P, an IBM
computer that is designed to operate at a sustained rate of 1-petaflop per
second and capable of reaching speeds of 3 petaflops.
SHARP will build upon and may eventually replace existing computer codes that
are used to conduct safety evaluations of today’s portfolio of aging nuclear
power reactors. Furthermore, those older codes, while adequate for evaluating
the scoping designs of next generation reactors, are not as well-equipped to
validate the performance of new reactor concepts now under design, Siegel said.
A simulation tool like SHARP, which is being written specifically to test SFR
design concepts, have the potential to shave off millions of dollars in reactor
design development and construction, he said.
The kind of modeling and simulation work taking place at Argonne in support
of the development of advanced nuclear energy systems is not by accident.
"We see Argonne as the one place that can pull off the creation of advanced
simulation tools that will be able to successfully replace some types of
experiments," Siegel said.
The reason: Argonne has the biggest concentration of scientists involved in
fast reactor design and fuel reprocessing technologies – expertise that is
essential to refining SFR design concepts. "This is the center of brain
power for nuclear energy research," Siegel said. Moreover, Argonne’s
nuclear engineers and chemical engineers have already been collaborating with
the lab’s computer scientists to develop precise computer simulations of the
process of physical changes that would occur in an SFR, as well as other
important aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle (e.g., separations and processing
technologies).
Note for Nuclear fuel cycle
The nuclear fuel cycle, also called nuclear fuel chain, is the progression of nuclear fuel through a series of differing stages. It consists of steps in the front end, which are the preparation of the fuel, steps in the service period in which the fuel is used during reactor operation, and steps in the back end, which are necessary to safely manage, contain, and either reprocess or dispose of spent nuclear fuel. If spent fuel is not reprocessed, the fuel cycle is referred to as a open fuel cycle (or a once-through fuel cycle). Likewise, if the spent fuel is reprocessed, it is referred to as a closed fuel cycle.
Not a cycle per se, fuel is used once and then sent to storage without further processing save additional packaging to provide for better isolation from the biosphere. This method is favored by six countries: the United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Spain and South
Africa. Some countries, notably Sweden and Canada, have designed repositories to permit future recovery of the material should the need arise, while others plan for permanent sequestration in a geological repository like Yucca Mountain in the United States.
Note for Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "nuclear weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT. Proliferation has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, the governments of which fear that more countries with nuclear weapons may increase the possibility of nuclear warfare (up to and including the so-called "countervalue" targeting of civilians with nuclear weapons), de-stabilize international or regional relations, or infringe upon the national sovereignty of individual nation-states.
Note for Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Energy is the energy that is directly released from the atomic nucleus. The conversion of nuclear mass to energy is consistent with the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc², in which E = energy, m = mass defect, and c = the speed of light in a vacuum (a physical constant).
Nuclear energy is released by three exothermic processes:
Radioactive decay, where a proton or neutron in the radioactive nucleus decays spontaneously by emitting a particle
Fusion, two atomic nuclei fuse together to form a heavier nucleus
Fission, the breaking of heavy nucleus into two nuclei
Nuclear energy was first discovered accidentally by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, when he found that photographic plates stored in the dark near uranium were blackened like X-ray plates, which had been just recently discovered at the time.
Note for Sodium Fast Reactor
The Sodium-cooled fast reactor or SFR is a Generation IV reactor project to design an advanced fast neutron reactor.
It builds on two closely related existing projects, the LMFBR and the Integral Fast Reactor, with the objective of producing a fast-spectrum, sodium-cooled reactor and a closed fuel cycle for efficient management of actinides and conversion of fertile uranium.
The SFR is designed for management of high-level wastes and, in particular, management of plutonium and other actinides. Important safety features of the system include a long thermal response time, a large margin to coolant boiling, a primary system that operates near atmospheric pressure, and intermediate sodium system between the radioactive sodium in the primary system and the water and steam in the power plant. With innovations to reduce capital cost, the SFR can serve markets for electricity.
About Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory, a renowned R&D center, brings the world's
brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and creative new
solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's
first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied
scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne
researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies,
universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their
specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the
nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is
managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of
Science.
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