DANESS v4.0: an integrated nuclear energy system assessment code

The development of nuclear energy over the past 50 years has given us various routes to progress the future use of nuclear energy as a sustainable energy option. Strong merits for the nuclear option are the potential virtual unlimited amounts of energy that may be generated from virgin uranium, the good economic performance in the long run, the safe operation of the whole fuel cycle facility and power park, and the very low GHG-emissions helping to solve the greenhouse gas effect on earth. Despite these positive elements, development of nuclear energy has been hampered during the past two decades due to essentially socio-political constraints which had indirectly an effect on the economics of nuclear energy as well. Moving forward with nuclear energy will demand interaction with all stakeholders via so-called strategic environmental assessment processes and thus the assessment of a variety of alternative intra-nuclear scenarios next to an assessment of nuclear energy versus other energy generation technology options. The DANESS-model has been developed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL, USA) in order to provide an integrated intra-nuclear assessment model allowing to simulate time-varying nuclear energy systems from cradle-to-grave and to support such nuclear energy assessment process from a technological, economic and environmental perspective. This paper provides an overview of the capabilities and applications of DANESS v4.0 which is released during Summer 2008. (authors)