Overview of the Consortium for the Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL)

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) was established in July 2010 for the purpose of providing advanced modeling and simulation solutions for commercial nuclear reactors. The primary goal is to provide coupled, higher-fidelity, usable modeling and simulation capabilities than are currently available. These are needed to address light water reactor (LWR) operational and safety performance-defining phenomena that are not yet able to be fully modeled taking a first-principles approach. In order to pursue these goals, CASL has participation from laboratory, academic, and industry partners. These partners are pursuing the solution of ten major “Challenge Problems” in order to advance the state-of-the-art in reactor design and analysis to permit power uprates, higher burnup, life extension, and increased safety. At present, the problems being addressed by CASL are primarily reactor physics-oriented; however, this paper is intended to introduce CASL to the reactor dosimetry community because of the importance of reactor physics modelling and nuclear data to define the source term for that community and the applicability and extensibility of the transport methods being developed