Nuclear modelling

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is leading a $3m research partnership funded by the US Department of Energy to create highly detailed computer models of a new type of nuclear reactor.

These models could play a key role for the future development of the new reactors, which meet stringent safety and nonproliferation criteria, can burn long-lived and highly radioactive materials, and can operate over a long time without using new fuel.

To undertake such a task, researchers will use both Rensselaer’s Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations, or CCNI - the world’s seventh most powerful supercomputer - and Brookhaven National Laboratory’s New York Blue - the world’s fifth most powerful supercomputer.

Rensselaer nuclear engineering and engineering physics Prof Michael Podowski is the project director and principal investigator of the new study. Along with Rensselaer and Brookhaven, he will work with researchers from Columbia University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.