U.S. DOE NEAMS Program and SHARP Multi-Physics Toolkit for High-Fidelity SFR Core Design and Analysis

Under the U.S. DOE's Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program, 3-D, high-fidelity multi-physics simulation capabilities are being developed to address the needs of designers and analysts in studying advanced reactor systems with a particular focus on sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs). Simulation-based High-fidelity Advanced Reactor Prototyping (SHARP) is a tool-kit developed under the Reactors Product Line of NEAMS, and it consists of pin-by-pin neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, and structural mechanics analysis modules, as well as the capabilities to integrate these modules for multi-physics calculations. Physics modules currently include the PROTEUS neutronics code with associated cross section generation and evaluation components, the Nek5000 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for thermal-hydraulics, and the DIABLO implicit finite element analysis code for structural mechanics. Each module can be utilized as a standalone code component or as part of an integrated analysis. The Reactor Product Line also supports the development of the advanced reactor Systems Analysis Module (SAM), the multigroup cross section generation module MC²-3, and the perturbation and sensitivity analysis module PERSENT. The development philosophy for the modules is to incorporate as much fundamental physics as possible in order to extend functionality to general reactor types, rather than developing tools for a limited set of specific reactor analysis applications. (author)