Cyclus Newsletter October 2017



Cyclus

Greetings! As the fall weather approaches the Cyclus development team wants to give you an update on the work being done and updates one things currently in development.

Developments

Geolocation

Cyclus modules now have the capability to utilize real values for latitude and longitude. This allows developers and users to plot the facilities that Cyclus builds at coordinates on mapping tools, such as google maps. This utility is also useful for instituions or regions that might be interested in determining where facilities should be placed using GIS information.

Third Party Modules

CyBorg

CyBorg has been given an offical release.

Cyborg uses effective one-group cross-sections for different fuel assembly types, initial compositions, and problem-specific burnups are automatically interpolated from pre-existing Origen reactor data libraries

New reactor libraries can easily be created using SCALE

CyBORG can be built using SCALE shared libraries (in principle, can be built without requiring the SCALE source code)

CyBORG v1.0 has been publicly released: http://www.github.com/sskutnik/cyborg

Bright-lite

Bright-lite has been updated to work with the new build system for cyclus. Bright-lite has also been mitraged to the BriXsuite organization on github. Development on the module is still continuing if you’d like to contribute to the software please contact Robert Flanagan at flanagrr@mailbox.sc.edu.

CyCLASS

A cyclus module under development that leverages the work of the CLASS methodology. More information on CLASS can be found here (registration required).

MBMore

A collection of archetypes that support Cyclus work at the University of Wisconsin in the Consortium for Verification Technology. One of these archetypes is CascadeEnrich that incorporates modeling equations for individual centrifuge machines to enable the deployment of an enrichment facility that designs an optimal cascade from a given number of centrifuges and target enrichment. The InteractRegion and StateInst archetypes are designed to track the interaction between different nation states to estimate a probability that any given state will pursue nuclear weapons, based on analysis of historical factors that contribute to such a decision.

Events

TWoFCS

July 19th through the 21st, the ERGS group at the University of South Carolina hosted a Technical Workshop on Fuel Cycle Simulation. Several members of the Cyclus community were in attendance and presented cyclus related work. Talks involving Cyclus included:

  • CyCLASS

  • CyBorg

  • Rickshaw

Additionally, Dr. Yarden Livnat was present at the meeting to talk about visualization and how it can be used to support simulation. Dr. Livnat supports Cyclus primarily though a NEUP, but was available to get feedback from the attendees.

Cyclus Developer Meeting

Following the Technical Workshop on Fuel Cycle Simulation (TWoFCS), several members of the cyclus development team met to discuss the current state, and future of Cyclus. Over the course of the meeting a list of current use cases and issues were brought up to set a basis for where future efforts should be focused. From this base, a list of improvements and changes were built.

  • Publish a Python Notebook with demonstration of Cymetric usage

  • Update the database to make the analysis of results easier to accomplish.

  • Split Cycamore - create a new repository for more advanced modules.

  • Add python notebook section to website.

  • Create a database for real existing reactors

  • Package in with cyclus a list of recipes common fuel forms

  • Update cyclus tutorial

Publications