In June 2016, the Department of Energy announced the Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research (DOE-CINR) award of the Integrated Research Project (IRP) to a multi-institutional team led by the North Carolina State University’s nuclear engineering professor Nam Dinh. The goal for the project is to advance the science of validation of advanced computer models used in nuclear power plant safety analysis. The advanced computer models are those in the toolkit developed to support risk-informed safety margin characterization (RISMC), an integrated deterministic/probabilistic safety analysis methodology developed in the Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability program. Specifically, the IRP focuses on “Development and Application of a Data-Driven Methodology for Validation of Risk-Informed Safety Margin Characterization Models”. This overarching problem integrates a group of multi-disciplinary scientists and engineers from the North Carolina State University, Purdue University, the George Washington University, Ohio State University, Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and industry researchers, with an established track record of multi-disciplinary collaboration. The NCSU team includes faculty from the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering professors Abhinav Gupta and John Baugh, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering professors Maria Avramova, and Igor Bolotnov.

This is the first time the DOE-CINR IRP is awarded to NCSU as the lead organization. The IRP award of $4,000,000 over three years is structured to provide financial support, research and educational opportunities, to twelve graduate students in nuclear, civil, and mechanical engineering in four partnering universities.