When engineers develop a complex new system, they typically compensate for a lack of field experience by overbuilding - extra material and heavy construction help create margin for error. This trend is seen in everyday life with airplanes, cars, and motorboats for example; over time, with more data and better computer-aided simulation and design, all have become lighter and more efficient, with better performance and improved safety. Several NSE teams are bringing this type of evolution to nuclear reactors by developing more-accurate approaches to modeling of reactor behavior. A group led by Benoit Forget, current holder of the Norman K. Rasmussen Assistant Professorship, is working at the sub-atomic level, developing advanced mathematical analyses and computation tools that provide a clearer picture of the complex physics of reactor cores. >> read full feature
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