A Finite Element-Based Nuclear Fuel Performance Code
BISON is a finite element-based nuclear fuel performance code applicable to a variety of fuel forms including light water reactor fuel rods, TRISO particle fuel, and metallic rod and plate fuel. It is a multiphysics fuel analysis tool that solves fully-coupled thermomechanical problems. Please refer to the new Training page for information on upcoming BISON trainings and how to attend.
Getting Started
BISON models complex and multiphysics problems integral to Nuclear Fuel Analysis in many different geometries and dimensions, from simplified and fast 1D simulations to complete and specific 3D analyses.
Become familiar with BISON by reviewing Workshop Slides and learn how to run BISON on your own machine with Example Problem Tutorials.
Code Documentation
BISON fuel models are developed to describe temperature and burnup dependent thermal properties, fission product swelling, densification, thermal and irradiation creep, fracture, and fission gas production and release.
Explore the overview in the Theory Manual and read about the individual code elements in the detailed Code Documentation.
Assessment Cases
BISON is currently being validated against a wide variety of integral light water reactor fuel rod experiments, TRISO fuel particle experiments, and metallic and mixed oxide fuel experiments. See the experiment descriptions and the simulation results for over 70 different assessment cases in our assessment report.
BISON Is Built on MOOSE
BISON is based on MOOSE and can efficiently solve problems using standard workstations or very large high-performance computers in a variety of different dimensions, including full 3D, 2D-RZ axisymmetric, layered axisymmetric 1D, and spherically symmetric 1D systems.
Within BISON and MOOSE code reliability is a central principle, so these projects employ a well defined development and testing strategy. Code changes are only merged into the repository after both a manual code review and the automated regression test system have been completed. The testing process and status of BISON is available at www.moosebuild.inl.gov.
BISON is developed by a team of scientists and engineers at Idaho National Laboratory and by collaborators throughout the world. BISON is supported by various funding agencies including the United States Department of Energy.
This documentation was built on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, from git commit ba73daedf91433d8ab74c8cd99b31192d9ca131b.