The research activities of the LRS at EPFL are separated in two main areas of focus. An important experimental program is currently being developed and undertaken on the CROCUS zero power research reactor and the LOTUS facility. In parallel, LRS is devoting a large amount resources to the area of multi-physics modelling, involving the development and validation of new methods and models.
Experimental Research:
New experimental programs have been started in the CROCUS reactor and LOTUS cavity in collaboration with existing and new partners, which include the Paul Scherrer Institut, CEA Cadarache and Chalmers University. In parallel, new instrumentations and measurement techniques are under development. The link provided below redirects towards the latest publication summarizing these new activities:
Computational Science:
The Computational Science R&D program aims at stepping beyond state of the art in nuclear reactor analysis by making use of the most modern infrastructures (HPC and cloud computing), programming paradigms, and mathematical tools. We believe in open-source software development as an effective way to stimulate synergies, avoid duplicated work, involve a broader community, multiply V&V efforts, and, ultimately, accelerate innovation. We collaborate with the IAEA to provide the member states with a modern, flexible, HPC-salable platform for the multi-physics analysis of nuclear systems. Our modelling activities span a wide range of phenomena, including fluid-dynamics, heat transfer, neutron transport, and the thermo-mechanical behavior of fuel rods. We also employ modern techniques in the field of reduced-order modelling and machine learning to produce minimal fast-running surrogate models for uncertainty quantification and data assimilation studies.