The State of Computational Science in Fission and Fusion Energy

TL;DR

This paper surveys the current state of computational tools in fusion and fission energy engineering, highlighting a shift towards modern, open-source, and modular software, with implications for future nuclear engineering practices.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive survey of computational scientists in nuclear energy, revealing trends towards modern programming languages, open-source codes, and increased modularity in software tools.

Findings

Growing preference for Python and C++ over FORTRAN

Increase in open-source and modular software usage

Rising budgets for code development, up to $50M

Abstract

The tools used to engineer something are just as important as the thing that is actually being engineered. In fact, in many cases, the tools can indeed determine what is engineerable. In fusion and fission1 energy engineering, software has become the dominant tool for design. For that reason, in 2024, for the first time ever, we asked 103 computational scientists developing the codes used in fusion and fission energy about the problems they are attempting to solve with their codes, the tools available to them to solve them, and their end to end developer experience with said tools. The results revealed a changing tide in software tools in fusion and fission, with more and more computational scientists preferring modern programming languages, open-source codes, and modular software. These trends represent a peek into what will happen 5 to 10 years in the future of nuclear engineering. Since the majority of our respondents belonged to US national labs and universities, these results hint at the most cutting-edge trends in the industry. The insights included in the State of Computational Science in Fission and Fusion Energy indicate a dramatic shift toward multiphysics codes, a drop-off in the use of FORTRAN in favor of more modern languages like Python and C++, and ever-rising budgets for code development, at times reaching $50M in a single organization. Our survey paints a future of nuclear engineering codes that is modular in nature, small in terms of compute, and increasingly prioritized by organizations. Access to our results in web form are available online.