Code development for nuclear reactor simulation

Full text of publication follows: Since several years, CEA, EDF and FANP have developed several numerical codes which are currently used for nuclear industry applications and will be remain in use for the coming years. Complementary to this set of codes and in order to better meet the present and future needs, a new system is being developed through a joint venture between CEA, EDF and FANP, with a ten year prospect and strong intermediate milestones. The focus is put on a multi-scale and multi-physics approach enabling to take into account phenomena from microscopic to macroscopic scale, and to describe interactions between various physical fields such as neutronics (DESCARTES), thermal-hydraulics (NEPTUNE) and fuel behaviour (PLEIADES). This approach is based on a more rational design of the softwares and uses a common integration platform providing pre-processing, supervision of computation and post-processing. This paper will describe the overall system under development and present the first results obtained. (authors)