MOOSE Reactor Module: An Open-Source Capability for Meshing Nuclear Reactor Geometries

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program has developed numerous physics solvers utilizing the open-source Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework for multiphysics reactor analysis. These solvers require input finite element meshes representing the discretized spatial domain. Typically, reactor analysts turn to licensed tools for the creation of reactor geometry meshes. Recently, open-source functionality has been added to the MOOSE framework to mesh common reactor geometries and improve MOOSE-based nuclear reactor application user workflows. The new functionality is primarily contained in the new Reactor module of MOOSE and includes support for hexagonal pins, assemblies, and cores, extended Cartesian geometry support, options for modeling static and rotating control drums within a hexagonal assembly, core periphery triangulation, and automatic tagging of pin, assembly, plane, and depletion regions for easier post processing of physics results. A set of reactor geometry mesh builder objects further streamlines the construction of hexagonal and Cartesian cores and allows mapping of materials to regions during mesh generation.

The meshes produced with the MOOSE Reactor module may be used directly within MOOSE-based applications or exported as Exodus II files for use in other finite element solvers. The tools have been demonstrated and verified using a variety of NEAMS physics solvers on a range of reactor applications, including a sodium-cooled fast reactor core analysis using Griffin, a fast reactor assembly thermal deformation analysis using MOOSE Tensor Mechanics, and a heat pipe–cooled microreactor coupled analysis using Griffin, Bison, and Sockeye. MOOSE’s Reactor module provides significant advantages compared to the use of external meshing tools when analyzing Cartesian and hexagonal reactor lattices using MOOSE-based applications: immediate accessibility (open-source) to the end user, low barrier to entry for new users, speed of mesh generation, volume preservation of meshed fuel pins, and simplification of analysis workflow when used in conjunction with MOOSE-based applications.

Keywords:

• MOOSE
• finite element
• reactor
• meshing
• open source

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the computing resources provided on Bebop, a high-performance computing cluster operated by the Laboratory Computing Resource Center at ANL.

The submitted paper has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, operator of ANL. ANL, a DOE Office of Science laboratory, is operated under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This paper was also authored by Battelle Energy Alliance LLC under contract no. DE-AC07-05ID14517 with the DOE.

The U.S. government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said paper to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the U.S. government. The DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan. http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.