Research Overview

The main technological agenda relating to nuclear power is not just to do with the production of materials for reactors but also the significant residues of radioactive material that is a by-product. Concerns over these residues (and accidents with them) have encouraged the development of Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATFs). These may not address the problem of waste directly, but certainly point towards ways of avoiding some well-known problems with energy production itself – preventing meltdown scenarios, for example, like that tragically observed on the Japanese coast. But ATFs are still immature, technologically. There is a paucity of research reactors that allow scientists to investigate how ATFs perform in reality rather than theoretically, for example. This project is concerned with developing better ATFs through computation.