Simulation Software Revolutionizes Nuclear Industry Workflow Efficiency, Focusing on Radiation Damage Modeling

Category： Industry News

Time： 2026-01-29

Summary： Nuclear-powered energy has been an integral part of life in the United Kingdom since 1956, with the opening of Calder Hall at Windscale in Cumbria—the world’s first nuclear power station to generate electricity in commercial quantities, even though its original purpose was to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Nuclear-powered energy has been an integral part of life in the United Kingdom since 1956, with the opening of Calder Hall at Windscale in Cumbria—the world’s first nuclear power station to generate electricity in commercial quantities, even though its original purpose was to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Over the past 63 years, it has become widely recognized that using nuclear fuel to generate electricity requires robust control and storage procedures to safely manage these challenging materials, a responsibility shared by a number of businesses and research institutions.
One such institution is the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which is responsible for manufacturing, maintaining and developing warheads for the UK’s nuclear deterrent. To support AWE and other organizations in their work, computational scientists from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are developing new software that is revolutionizing workflow efficiency in the nuclear industry. At the heart of this effort is the DL_POLY software suite, a molecular dynamics simulation package managed by STFC’s Scientific Computing Department (SCD) under the Collaborative Computational Project 5 (CCP 5).
Led by Professor Ilian Todorov, STFC scientists have developed DL_POLY to provide scalable performance, capable of running on everything from a single-processor workstation to a high-performance parallel computer. This versatility makes it an ideal tool for simulating complex nuclear systems, including the behavior of radioactive materials over time. In collaboration with Professor Kostya Trachenko at QMUL, the team has added a new functional tool to the DL_POLY suite that can simulate the effects of radiation damage in materials—a critical capability for understanding the aging process of radioactive materials such as metals and oxides.
Using DL_POLY, researchers can build representative models of actinide oxide systems and simulate how these systems age over time, under different environmental conditions and temperature ranges. This is invaluable for AWE, which carries out extensive experimental and theoretical research into the aging of radioactive materials to ensure their safe storage and handling. Over the past 10 years, AWE has collaborated with the University of Bath to use the DL_POLY software suite to develop increasingly realistic models of actinide materials, including oxide overlayers and the impact of grain boundaries on the transport of gaseous species through the material.
The new functional tool developed with QMUL adds another vital element to this research, helping scientists gain a more comprehensive understanding of the processes involved in radiation damage and material aging. Understanding these processes is crucial for designing optimal storage conditions and environments for radioactive materials, ensuring their safe management for decades to come. As the nuclear industry continues to evolve, simulation software like DL_POLY is set to play an increasingly important role in improving workflow efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing safety across the sector.

Keywords： Simulation Software Revolutionizes Nuclear Industry Workflow Efficiency, Focusing on Radiation Damage Modeling

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