TF VTR SimBench-2018
Major Research Effort
reactor benchmarking
What Simulations need to be done for the VTR?
Part of the VTR mission will be to provide experimental and computational advances in nuclear and materials science by enabling a comprehensive understanding of nuclear fuels as well as structural materials to support the development of advanced nuclear energy systems. ISU has an opportunity to play a role in the development of a VTR program for material irradiation testing. Such a testing program will have a research component that utilizes computational advances to benchmark models of materials that have been exposed to the fast neutrons produced by the VTR. We propose a program to perform model validation using experiments characterize microstructure before and after irradiation.
Specifically nuclear fuel cracking as a result of irradiation will be a focus of the VTR based validation program. Using INL's simulation tool MARMOT, the initial step of this research program will be to develop a validation experiment to measure fuel cracking. The validation experiment will focus on methods to measure local phenomena changes that avoid observing averaged microstructure properties. Most of the available data reports the results of average microstructural properties over long time periods. We propose to development a validation experiment using MARMOT that will characterize microstructure changes in 3D over short time periods.
Education and Training
Reactor Benchmarking
ISU currently has a physics student working as an intern with the MOOSE software development group. The student is focusing on how ions, like fission fragments, loose their energy traversing materials like fuel rods. The students current research involves altering the packages within MARMOT to use different physical descriptions of energy loss that are highly dependent on fragment kinematics. After the internship is completed later this year and with the support of this proposal, the student will move onto using MARMOT to develop a 3-D description of the damage done to a fuel which would result in cracking. Armed with this experience, the student can design experiments that would be used to validate the prediction of MARMOT. The skill sets received in advanced computer and development are in high demand and would easily enable the student to successful enter the technical work force.
Interactions with other institutions
Reactor Benchmarking
Involvement in MOOSE INL group
ISU currently has a student who is an intern with INL's software development group an may be a well timed opportunity to build a program to utilize INL's investment in new computing resources. ISU's physics department has been focused more on the Idaho Accelerator Center and Jefferson Lab. With the support of this proposal, ISU's physics department can build upon its limited relationship with INL by becoming more involved in INL's advanced computing initiatives. From our perspective, INL's new computer center will be the central hub from which strengthen ISU-INL collaborative research.
Activities
Reactor Benchmarking
Describe simulations here
MARMOT will be used to develop validation experiments based on the results of a 3-D description of the damage done to a fuel after irradiation.