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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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UW-Madison: A Midwestern nucleus of fission and fusion
With more than six decades as a top-ranked program in its rearview, the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics (NEEP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is hardly slowing down. In fact, NEEP is continuing to grow and develop its faculty, curriculum, and research.
Junlin Fang, Jun Sun, Zhe Sui
Nuclear Technology | Volume 212 | Number 7 | July 2026 | Pages 1716-1727
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2025.2535249
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The dual-module High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) demonstration reactor, led by the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University, has achieved successful operation. To enhance economic efficiency, the HTR-PM600S incorporating six nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) modules has been established as the next-phase development objective. The complex coupling effects of multimodule systems necessitate systematic simulation to preinvestigate operational characteristics. The simulator, leveraging its full-scope simulation capabilities and real-time computational performance, has evolved from an operator training tool to a critical operational analysis platform. By integrating neutronics, primary/secondary circuit thermal-hydraulic models, and control systems, the HTR-PM simulator establishes a complete framework that plays an important role in nuclear power plant operational studies. When extending the HTR-PM simulator to HTR-PM600S modeling, direct replication of standard NSSS module configurations substantially increases simulation time cost. Particularly in the primary circuit thermal-hydraulic model, the linear expansion of the number of thermal component network matrices and the dimensions of the helium flow network matrix have driven single-step simulation time beyond the 100-ms time step, constituting the critical bottleneck for multimodule simulation. This study dissects the computational time cost of different simulation tasks and matrix characteristics of a helium flow network, proposing targeted optimization strategies: implementing multithreaded parallel computing for thermal component networks and adopting KLU sparse matrix solver for helium flow network. Through these optimizations, the primary circuit thermal-hydraulic computation time has been reduced from 160 to 45Â ms, achieving real-time performance while reserving an over 50% temporal margin for subsequent complex model expansions.