SCALE users from 85 organizations across 21 countries gathered online and in person at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory from June 5 to June 7 for the Eighth Annual SCALE Users Group Workshop.
The SCALE software suite, developed and maintained by ORNL, is widely recognized for its modeling and simulation capabilities in nuclear safety analysis and design. SCALE offers a comprehensive, verified, validated and user-friendly toolset for nuclear professionals in government, research, academia and utilities from around the world.
The meeting included 32 presentations and 14 hands-on tutorials on impactful and innovative applications of SCALE. The workshop featured invited speakers from the Electric Power Research Institute, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Sandia National Laboratories, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, or UTK, and X-energy.
This year’s workshop demonstrated a strong student SCALE user population, with 29 attendees from U.S. academic institutions participating in the meeting and two students from UTK were recognized as winners of the annual “Best SCALE Model Contest.” Annie Berens and Jonathan Wing, both UTK students, along with Rabab Elzohery, an R&D staff associate in the Nuclear Transmutation and Decay Physics group, submitted winning models that will be showcased in the 2025 SCALE calendar that will be available on the meeting website.
The team also used this opportunity to announce the launch of the SCALE Learning Library page on the SCALE website. This tool was developed to address previous users’ feedback and to improve the available resources for enabling the transfer of knowledge to the current and next generation of scientists and engineers. The team will continue to improve this resource with additional learning modules planning to be added in the near future.
The SCALE team thanks the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Criticality Safety Program, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear Program for their continuous support of SCALE educational and training activities like this workshop. All technical and tutorial presentations from the workshop will be made publicly available on the SCALE website and the meeting website.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
