The development, qualification and availability of AECL analytical, scientific and design codes

Over the past several years, AECL has embarked on a comprehensive program to develop, qualify and support its key safety and licensing codes, and to make executable versions of these codes available to the international nuclear community. To this end, we have instituted a company-wide Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Program for Analytical, Scientific and Design Computer Programs to ensure that the design, development, maintenance, modification, procurement and use of computer codes within AECL is consistent with today's quality assurance standards. In addition, we have established a comprehensive Code Validation Project (CVP) with the goal of qualifying AECL's 'front-line' safety and licensing codes by 2001 December. The outcome of this initiative will be qualified codes, which are properly verified and validated for the expected range of applications, with associated statements of accuracy and uncertainty for each application. The code qualification program, based on the CSA N286.7 standard, is intended to ensure (1) that errors are not introduced into safety analyses because of deficiencies in the software, (2) that an auditable documentation base is assembled that demonstrates to the regulator that the codes are of acceptable quality, and (3) that these codes are formally qualified for their intended applications. Because AECL and the Canadian nuclear utilities (i.e., Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, Hydro Quebec and New Brunswick Power) generally use the same safety and licensing codes, the nuclear industry in Canada has agreed to work cooperatively together towards the development, qualification and maintenance of a common set of analysis tools, referred to as the Industry Standard Toolset (IST). This paper provides an overview of the AECL Software Quality Assurance Program and the Code Validation Project, and their associated linkages to the Canadian nuclear community's Industry Standard Toolset initiative to cooperatively qualify and support commonly used safety and licensing analysis tools. In addition, this paper discusses the recently established AECL Code Centre, whose mandate is to make AECL codes available to interested organizations world-wide. By providing broader access of its codes to other organizations, AECL is working to foster a greater opportunity for international collaboration on CANDU development. (authors)