The Nuclear Applications and Economics group gathers a wide range of expertise, from advanced reactor design, reactor physics analyses, methods development, and economics assessment. It is leading several projects for DOE-NE in collaboration with industry, other national laboratories, and universities. This group is working on innovative advanced nuclear reactor concepts targeting a wide variety of energy markets, investigating the technical requirements and opportunities in terms of operational flexibility, as well as the cost requirements to compete in such markets. The group’s economics method development activities involve developing algorithms and tools for nuclear economics, cost assessments, and analysis of electricity markets. The NAE group also leads reactor physics modeling of advanced nuclear concepts to support design and high-fidelity multiphysics analyses. In particular, it leads the development of the user interface to the Argonne Reactor Computation (ARC) suite of reactor physics codes and supports its users.

Projects

• Micro-Reactor Design and Analysis
• Application of the ACCERT Algorithm to Inform on Overnight Capital Cost
• Advanced Fuel Cycle Cost Basis Report
• Energy Market Modeling
• PyARC
• WATTS

• Materials Innovations to Advance Nuclear Microreactor Development