CCP for nuclear thermal hydraulics - supporting next generation civil nuclear reactors (CCP NTH)

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Nuclear energy is a CO2 neutral energy generation technology and will play an important role in reducing green-house gas emissions to meet government and societal targets and improve the quality of life. However, a main concern of the nuclear energy is its safety. The next generation nuclear reactors under development to be deployed in the next decades are aimed at achieving inherent safety using technologies such as passive cooling. Such systems require a significantly advanced thermal hydraulics approach to deal with much higher temperature and pressure systems and/or non-conventional coolants such as liquid metal and molten salts. The traditional methodology is insufficient to deal with the new challenges to be encountered. The proposed CCP for nuclear thermal hydraulics is aimed at building and supporting a community of researchers and engineers for developing and maintaining computational methods and software packages to modernise the nuclear thermal hydraulics tools to meet the demands imposed from the development of advanced next-generation nuclear reactor systems. The activities of the proposed CCP are grouped into two work packages. WP1 is aimed at community building and networking through a variety of activities and events. These include annual technical meetings, special topic, cross-CCP and international workshops, training courses, international and UK visit/exchange programs, benchmarking exercises and various outreach activities. WP2 is aimed at development and maintenance of methodology and computer code for the community through services provided by STFC's Computational Science Centre for Research Communities. The work includes supporting, developing and maintaining (i) robust (reliable, affordable and user-friendly) CFD methodologies and tools for the analysis of reactor systems and (ii) high fidelity modelling and simulation methods and software tools, focusing on a community DNS code, aimed at providing new understanding and benchmarking database for modelling validation and engineering correlation development. The CCP will also explore innovative and disruptive methodologies aimed at bringing a step-change in computational thermal hydraulics analysis. The proposed CCP is formed from academic and industrial partners. The initial academic memberships are Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool John Moores, Cambridge, Oxford, Bangor, Queen Mary, Imperial Colleague London and STFC Daresbury Laboratory. The industrial partners are EDF Energy, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, Moltex, Rolls-Royce and Wood Nuclear. The CCP also includes an international partner and advisor from Penn State University/Argonne National Laboratory. The CCP will encourage any interested researchers and engineers to become a member when it is up and running and any activities organised by the CCP are open to the entire community.