OPEn HPC theRmomechanical tools for the development of eAtf fuels

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Increasing further the safety of light water nuclear reactors in the new operating conditions induced by their integration in a more variedenergy mix brings many new challenges for fuel development. This calls for effective and validated tools enabling one to capture thecomplexity of the behaviour of fuel elements under various operation conditions from nominal to design basis accident ones.. Theobjective of the OperaHPC proposal is to develop open tools using High Performance Computing (HPC) enabling a full 3D high-fidelitythermo-mechanical simulation of the fuel element including the material microstructure. This will contribute to the design of so-calledfuel element digital twins. This development includes an ambitious basic research program devoted to the investigation of non-linearmechanical behaviour of irradiated fuel using multiscale experiments and simulations from the atomic scale up to the material law. Thiswill yield the detailed description of the in-pile behaviour of the fuel element and the materials data necessary for the simulation. The toolsdeveloped will be assessed against state-of-the-art 1D/3D fuel performance codes for verification, definition of boundary conditions andcoupling with neutronic, thermochemical and thermohydraulic codes. Validation and uncertainty analyses will also be performed throughthe comparison of the results of the 3D simulations with the experimental data available from irradiation programs. The knowledge fromthese advanced simulations will be transferred to industrial fuel performance codes thanks to the application of new methods based onreduced order and meta models, including Artificial Intelligence. The HPC tools will finally be applied to the detailed evaluation ofinnovative fuel element concepts, including (enhanced) accident tolerant fuels, under transient conditions in several light water reactordesigns.