Our group performs deterministic safety analysis by developing and validating advanced methods to accurately determine reactor safety margins and reactor behavior. By performing high-fidelity numerical predictions of the reactor behavior in abnormal transient scenarios of safety significance, our work supports the nuclear reactor safety analysis, and increases the fidelity of primary system simulation. This approach is at the heart of nuclear power’s excellent safety record – always striving to improve current tools and methods.

We investigate the capability and limitations of best-estimate coupled codes for reactor transient analysis, a complex problem involving the solution of thermal-hydraulics and neutron kinetics equations. In addition to the coupled thermal-hydraulics and neutron kinetic simulations of nuclear reactors and analysis of reactor transients and stability, we expanded the research to include fundamental mathematical, numerical and physical models problems, and include other fields and physical models, particularly fuel performance and coolant chemistry.

Contact : txk (at) illinois.edu