About CASL
Strategic Philosophy
Mission
Provide coupled, higher-fidelity, usable modeling and simulation capabilities needed to address light water reactor operational and safety performance-defining phenomena.
To complete its mission, CASL will:
- Develop, integrate, and couple a suite of robust, verified, validated, and usable simulation tools within a common, multi-physics virtual environment for reactor applications (VERA) designed to provide a number of problem- and user-dependent products;
- Develop and evolve within VERA physics-based materials models of the fuel system, reactor vessel and internals, improved constitutive relations of coolant and corrosion chemistry, and scalable, robust, modern methodologies for 3D full-core thermal hydraulics and pin-resolved radiation transport;
- Develop and apply an overall methodology for VERA verification and validation, calibration through data assimilation, sensitivity analysis, discretization error analysis and control, uncertainty quantification, and predictive maturity assessment;
- Demonstrate the applicability of VERA products to address essential industrial issues for achieving power uprates, lifetime extension, and higher fuel burn-up while ensuring that fuel performance and safety limits are met;
- Develop and apply human-machine interfaces that are structured to be reactor-aware to facilitate ease-of-usage;
- Develop, as necessary, distinct simulation capabilities, of variable fidelity, appropriate for execution on different classes of computer platforms, ranging from engineering clusters (<100 TF) to leadership-class high performance computers (>1 PF);
- Benchmark VERA products with operational data from commercial reactors and provide for early deployment to industry through Test Stands and Pilot Projects;
- Engage regulatory authorities to enable future application of the results;
- Employ a Science Council (SC) for independent assessment of the quality and relevance of the executed scientific work and an Industry Council (IC) for review of plans, specs, and products and advice on gaps, critical needs, and incremental technology deployment; and
- Track program performance using three sets of performance metrics that assess technical performance, management performance, and program innovation and agility.
Vision
Predict, with confidence, the performance of nuclear reactors through comprehensive, science-based modeling and simulation technology that is deployed and applied broadly throughout the nuclear energy industry to enhance safety, reliability, and economics.
CASL will address, through new insights afforded by its modeling and simulation (M&S;) technology, key nuclear energy industry challenges to furthering power uprates, higher burnup, and/or lifetime extension while providing higher confidence in enhanced nuclear safety. CASL will deploy a technology step change (VERA) that supports today’s nuclear energy industry and accelerates future advances in the development of this cleaner energy source. CASL M&S; technology will become the leading nuclear energy industry M&S; capability for supporting advanced nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) and nuclear fuel research, development, and deployment. By making VERA accessible to the nuclear energy community as early as possible, CASL will demonstrate − through industry acceptance, adaption, and licensing − that its M&S; technology proactively targets the right industry problems.
Values
CASL recognizes that strong operating values are vital to execution of our strategy. These values inform how CASL work is performed and sets expectations for the behavior of CASL members. They express the beliefs about what it will take to succeed in the mission. CASL values address:
- Safety and Security: all accidents are preventable; proactively manage risks; and protect what is entrusted to us.
- Agility and Innovation: operate in an environment that encourages innovation and creativity; push the boundaries of what is possible; and embrace change and challenge the status quo.
- Delivering Results: confront and solve problems; deliver on our commitments; and work together to achieve meaningful and measurable results.
- Excellence with Integrity: show uncompromising honesty; perform to the highest standards; and do the right thing.
- Customer Focus: commit to exceeding the customers' expectations; be responsive and straightforward with customers; and recognize that nuclear safety is the ultimate customer.
- Staff Development: progression and development of staff members is essential to successful delivery of CASL products, therefore CASL leadership will consider the impacts of project decisions on CASL staff and CASL educational efforts, and, to the extent possible, specifically respect the needs of young scientists and engineers to achieve quality research outcomes and prepare them to lead the nuclear energy industry’s adoption of advanced M&S capabilities.
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 and fundamental changes of scope are feasible for CASL (for example, the 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, including the addition of new core partners or contributing members to the consortium or the exit of existing core partners or contributing members from the consortium.