Development of a New Thermochemistry Solver for Multiphysics Simulations of Nuclear Materials

Nuclear materials are highly complex multiscale, multiphysics systems, and an effective prediction of nuclear reactor performance and safety requires simulation capabilities that tightly couple different physical phenomena. The Idaho National Laboratory’s Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) provides the computational foundation for performing such simulations and currently consists of the continuum scale fuel performance code Bison and the mesoscale phase-field code Marmot. With the move towards advanced reactors that employ high temperature fluids compared to conventional reactors, corrosion has become a problem of great interest. A new application called Yellowjacket is under development to directly couple thermodynamic equilibrium and kinetics with phase field models in order to model corrosion in advanced reactors. As part of Yellowjacket, a thermochemistry code is being developed to perform thermochemical equilibrium calculations for a range of different materials, which is currently in its infancy. This paper describes the recent progress towards the development of Yellowjacket and presents the plans for developing capabilities of practical interest to the nuclear industry.

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