Dr. Mehdi Asgari, Senior Computational Nuclear Engineer and Industry Engagement Coordinator, ORNL, will give a talk entitled "Overview of the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA)"

November 01, 2024

@ 10:10 am, Arlington, 6-051 VTRC (in-person); Blacksburg, 440 Goodwin Hall
For remote access, click here to register

Abstract
The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs (CASL), a DOE Energy Innovation Hub was initiated in 2010 with a mission to develop the next generation of advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to tackle the challenging problems facing the nuclear industry and improve the operation while enhancing the safety and sustainability of the existing Light Water Reactor (LWR). CASL brought together scientists and engineers from several DOE national laboratories, universities, commercial nuclear reactor industry and organizations to develop the next state-of-art reactor simulator. The Virtual Environment for Reactor Application (VERA) was developed by DOE through the research, development, and applications performed during the CASL program. VERA was successfully validated against data from hundreds of cycles of the currently operating PWR fleet during CASL. Whereas CASL primarily focused on challenge problems related to pressurized water reactors (PWRs), the VERA was determined to be uniquely positioned to address the M&S challenges of boiling water reactors (BWRs). In October 2019, the US DOE-NE funded a two-year project initiated by Constellation entitled “Modeling and Analysis of Exelon BWRs for Eigenvalue & Thermal Limits Predictability.” The project was led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Constellation with participation from Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF), and three universities: North Carolina State University (NCSU), the University of Michigan (UM), and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). The primary objective of this project was to enhance VERA’s capabilities to support detailed M&S of BWRs. These capabilities will play a vital role not only for improved reactivity and thermal margin predictions, but also for continued advancement of new fuel products and designs such as accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) and their deployment to current operating BWRs. This presentation will provide a brief overview of VERA capabilities for LWR modeling and simulations that resulted from these aforementioned projects.

Bio
Dr. Mehdi Asgari is a senior computational nuclear engineer and industry engagement coordinator in the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is involved with the development and benchmarking of the advanced modeling & simulation (M&S) capabilities including those in the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA). Having held positions at Louisiana State University, DOE national labs, and industry, Dr. Asgari has over 35 years of experience in the areas of particle transport method, computational reactor physics capability development and analysis, nuclear fuel cycle analysis and reload design and optimization applied to Light Water Reactors (LWRs). Prior to joining ORNL in 2017, Dr. Asgari worked at Studsvik ScandPower for over nine years as a principal consultant performing reactor core M&S and analysis. At Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Dr. Asgari was the manager for Reactor Physics Analysis & Design department. At Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF), Dr. Asgari worked as a technical program manager (TPM) for seven years responsible for fuel cycle and reload design as well as licensing analyses for several BWR nuclear power plants. He holds numerous issued patents in services and product designs applied to LWR.

He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, and doctorate in engineering science with emphasis in Nuclear Engineering from Louisiana State University.