ORNL R&D 100 Award

Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications was developed by a consortium of researchers from ORNL, the Electric Power Research Institute, Westinghouse Nuclear and Idaho, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

VERA is a physics simulation tool that visualizes the internal processes of commercial nuclear fission power plants and predicts reactor behavior in a number of potential scenarios.

The engine allows nuclear technicians to produce 3-D, high-fidelity power distributions to simulate atomic particle behavior and core conditions on a reactor-wide scale.

It has demonstrated the power up process of a new plant, modeled accidents and emergency situations and examined the effects of corrosion on fuel rod performance.

The development team consisted of 42 members. The ORNL researchers were Jess Gehin, John Turner, Mark Baird, Kevin Clarno, Benjamin Collins, Gregory Davidson, Thomas Evans, Andrew Godfrey, Steven Hamilton, Seth Johnson, Kang Seog Kim, Douglas Kothe, Rose Montgomery, Tara Pandya, Robert Salko, Matthew Sieger, Srdjan Simunovic, Stuart Slattery and Shane Stimpson.

VERA was funded by the DOE’s Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors.