Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL)

About CASL

Introduction

Energy Innovation Hubs bring together teams of top scientists and engineers from academia, industry, and government to collaborate and overcome the most critical known barriers to achieving national climate and energy goals that have proven resistant to solution via the normal research and R&D; enterprise. HUBS, a major new initiative within the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE), represent a new structure, modeled after notable research endeavors and institutes such as the Manhattan Project (nuclear weapons), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (radar), and the AT&T; Bell Laboratories (transistor), where a sizable concentration of brainpower and resources enabled these integrated research centers to combine basic and applied research with engineering to accelerate scientific discovery in critical areas. Hubs are consistent with Brookings Institution’s recommendations for Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes to establish new research paradigms that better leverage the unique capacity of America's research. Hubs focus on a single topic, with work spanning the gamut, from basic research through engineering development to partnering with industry in commercialization, and consist of large, highly integrated and collaborative creative teams working to solve priority technology challenges.

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) is the first DOE Hub for the modeling and simulation (M&S;) of commercial nuclear reactors. In receiving the $122 million Hub award over a five-year period, CASL successfully responded to, and has implemented, the stipulations in the January 2010 DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA):

Utilize existing advanced modeling & simulation (M&S;) capabilities developed in other programs within the DOE and other agencies;
Apply them within a new multi-physics environment and develop new, valuable capabilities as appropriate;
Adapt the new tools into the current and future culture of nuclear engineers and produce a multi-physics environment to be used by a wide range of practitioners to conduct predictive simulations;
Have a clear mission that focuses and drives R&D;
Use data from real physical operational reactors to validate the virtual reactor; and
Have a lead organization with strong scientific leadership and a clearly defined central location (“one roof”).

The CASL Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) incorporates science-based models, state-of-the-art numerical methods, modern computational science and engineering practices, uncertainty quantification (UQ) and validation against data from operating pressurized water reactors (PWRs), single-effect experiments, and integral tests. It couples state-of-the-art fuel and material performance, neutron transport (neutronics), thermal-hydraulics (T-H), and structural models with existing tools for systems and safety analysis, and is being designed for implementation on today’s leadership-class computers, advanced architecture platforms now under development by DOE, and the engineering workstation of the future. Within VERA, CASL develops and applies models, methods, data, and understanding while addressing three critical areas of performance for nuclear power plants (NPPs):

Reducing capital and operating costs per unit of energy by enabling power uprates and lifetime extension for existing NPPs and by increasing the rated powers and lifetimes of new Generation III+ NPPs;
Reducing nuclear waste volume generated by enabling higher fuel burnup, and
Enhancing nuclear safety by enabling high-fidelity predictive capability for component performance through the onset of failure.

CASL is a consortium that consists of ten core partners (Figure 1) and numerous contributing members. The ten core partners formed the consortium that formulated the original CASL plan and DOE Energy Innovation Hub proposal during the Aug 2009 – Apr 2010 time period. The core partners made an institutional commitment to CASL and also occupy all positions of technical leadership and management oversight for CASL. They shoulder the burden for technical execution of the CASL plan and as such retain the majority of the resources available to CASL for executing this plan.

Figure 1: CASL core partner institutions

The consortium connects fundamental research and technology development through an integrated partnership of government, academia, and industry that extends across the nuclear energy enterprise. The CASL partner institutions possess the interdisciplinary expertise necessary to apply existing M&S; capabilities to real-world reactor design issues and to develop new system-focused capabilities that will provide the foundation for advances in nuclear energy technology. CASL has been designed to promote collaboration and synergy among the partner institutions, taking advantage of the breadth and depth of their expertise and capitalizing on their shared focus and vision for developing solutions for the future of nuclear energy. CASL is an outcome-oriented endeavor. As such, the scientific and engineering products are of primary importance. The evolution of scientific needs will inevitably lead to changes in the roles of core partners and contributing members within the existing scope. Fundamental changes of scope are feasible for CASL, for example application of CASL–created tools to reactor systems beyond those originally defined. These circumstances may also require changing roles for core partners and contributing members, up to and including the addition of a new core partner or contributing member to the consortium or the exit of an existing core partner or contributing member from the consortium. Such outcome-driven modifications to the teaming arrangements are reasonable and to be expected over time.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), DOE’s largest science and energy laboratory, originally founded to develop the world’s first nuclear fuel cycle, is the CASL lead institution. The participation of Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) as CASL core partners provides exceptional expertise in fundamental science, nuclear energy R&D;, transformational high-performance computing (HPC) technology, and development of models and algorithms for the solution of complex problems. Academic partners North Carolina State University (NCSU), the University of Michigan (UM), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are leaders in nuclear engineering R&D; and education. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) conducts R&D; to ensure that nuclear power remains a safe and economically feasible generation option and provides CASL with connections to nuclear power plant operators, regulatory agencies, and other research organizations. Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC), a pioneer in nuclear power, has a long and successful history of supplying leading-edge nuclear technology. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) operates six reactors — 3 PWRs and 3 boiling water reactors (BWRs) — that provide more than 6,600 MW of electricity to the grid.

CASL implements a management strategy distinguished by collaboration and central leadership, with multidisciplinary teams executing a single, milestone-driven plan that depends upon integration of co-dependent projects. The CASL management structure includes regular collocation at CASL for face-to-face meetings, use of computing technology to achieve multidisciplinary collaboration, and a Virtual Office, Community, and Computing (VOCC) Laboratory that integrates the best emerging technologies to build a virtual one roof, VOCC, where necessary, is fostering the development of many critically necessary emerging technologies and even “new” technologies and capabilities to support state-of-the-art scientific collaboration for CASL.

CASL executes its work in six technical Focus Areas (FAs) and one integrating Collaboration and Ideation (C&I;) area:

Advanced Modeling Applications (AMA) - Provides the primary interface of CASL R&D; with the applications related to existing physical reactors, the Challenge Problems, and full-system validation. AMA provides the primary bridge between the scientific and computational capabilities developed by CASL and external stakeholders (e.g. NPP operators, nuclear fuel vendors, and regulatory authorities). AMA also provides the necessary direction to models and methods development to be incorporated into VERA by providing the functional requirements, prioritizing the modeling and simulation needs, and performing assessments of M&S; capability.
Virtual Reactor Integration (VRI) - Develops the VERA toolkit by integrating the models, methods, application codes, and data developed by other FAs within a unified software environment. VRI also develops and provides the CASL reactor structural mechanics capabilities. VRI releases VERA both within CASL and to external users and developers within the nuclear energy community.
Radiation Transport Methods (RTM) - Develops and integrates next-generation neutron transport simulation tools in VERA.
Thermal Hydraulics Methods (THM) - Advances existing and develops new models and simulation capabilities for single- and multi-phase thermal hydraulic (T-H) analysis and its integration with solution environments deployed on large-scale parallel computers.
Materials Performance and Optimization (MPO) - Develops improved materials performance models for fuels, cladding, and structural materials, and integrates those models into a fuel system performance and response capability.
Validation and Uncertainty Quantification (VUQ) - Provides tools and methodologies for the quantification of uncertainties and associated validation of VERA models and integrated systems, which are essential to the application of M&S; to reactor designs.
Collaboration and Ideation (C&I) - Implements CASL’s “virtual one-roof” approach through the Virtual Office, Community, and Computing (VOCC) Project that integrates existing and emerging technologies to provide CASL participants with state-of-the-art tools for collocation or distance collaboration. CASL’s virtual-one-roof strategy is dependent upon the development and maturation of the VOCC, which consists of a unique infrastructure integrated in a special way so as to promote collaboration and critical thinking. Critical thinking leads to insight, and insight leads to innovation. “Innovation at the speed of insight” means a more rapid deployment of predictive simulation capability to the nuclear industry. VOCC not only provides an environment for collaborative CASL development, but assists in demonstrating VERA and CASL associated capability to industry, new partners, and potential tool users.