Kitware to Develop an Open-Source HPC Design-Analysis Environment for Nuclear Energy Research

Kitware today announces a new Fast-Track award from the U.S. Department of Energy for the development of an integrated design-analysis environment (IDAE) for the nuclear power industry.

Construction of nuclear power plants may have been halted for more than 30 years, but the United States’ nuclear power industry has continued to grow due to remarkable gains in power plant utilization through improved refueling, maintenance, and safety systems at existing plants. Throughout this time, the introduction of high performance computing (HPC) resources and advances in modeling and simulation have been deployed in many technical industries to enable rapid development of innovative products thus reducing the need to build expensive prototypes.

This award encompasses both Phases I and II, and will involve the simplification and integration of advanced modeling and simulation capabilities into nuclear energy research workflows. The project will leverage established open-source tools to create a graphical end-to-end umbrella for guiding users and developers through the nuclear energy modeling and simulation lifecycle.

The resulting framework will deliver strategic advancements in meshing, data exchange, and visualization for ensembles, uncertainty quantification, and analysis. The use of the final design-analysis environment will enable an ecosystem of synergistic activities to support a nuclear energy renaissance.

“We’re looking forward to seeing the impact our design-analysis environment will have on nuclear energy research,” said Dr. Patrick O’Leary, Assistant Director of Scientific Computing at Kitware and Principal Investigator on this project. “By advancing the state-of-the-art in modeling and simulation, nuclear energy companies’ innovation will be accelerated and more realistic virtual design could lead to tomorrow’s nuclear power systems.”

For more information on the IDAE or Kitware’s Scientific Computing expertise, please visit www.kitware.com or email kitware@kitware.com.

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-SC0010119. The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official DOE position, policy, or decision unless so designated by other documentation.