UNIC has run successfully at DOE leadership computing facilities, home to some of the world's fastest supercomputers, including the energy-efficient IBM Blue Gene/P at Argonne and the Cray XT5 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Although still under development, the code has already produced new scientific results.
In particular, the Argonne team has carried out highly detailed simulations of the Zero Power Reactor experiments on up to 163,840 processor cores of the Blue Gene/P and 222,912 processor cores of the Cray XT5, as well as on 294,912 processor cores of a Blue Gene/P at the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany. With UNIC, the researchers have successfully represented the details of the full reactor geometry for the first time and have been able to compare the results directly with the experimental data.
Argonne's UNIC code provides a powerful new tool for designers of safe, environmentally friendly nuclear reactors – a key component of our nation's current and future energy needs. By integrating innovative design features with state-of-the-art numerical solvers, UNIC allows researchers not only to better understand the behavior of existing reactor systems but also to predict the behavior of many of the newly proposed systems having untested design characteristics.
Development of the UNIC code is funded principally by DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy through the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. The Argonne UNIC project is a key part of the NEAMS efforts to replace the traditional "test-based" approach to nuclear systems design with a new "science-based" approach in which advanced modeling and simulation play a dominant role.
Ever wanted to see a nuclear reactor core in action? Here's a detailed simulation of the Zero Power Reactor experiment, run by Argonne's unique "UNIC" code.
(Photo Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
An elevation plot of the highest energy neutron flux distributions from an axial slice of a nuclear reactor core is shown superimposed over the same slice of the underlying geometry. This figure shows the rapid spatial variation in the high energy neutron distribution between within each plate along with the more slowly varying, global distribution. The figure is significant since UNIC allows researchers to capture both of these effects simultaneously.
(Photo Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)
Source: DOE/Argonne National Laboratory