Knowledge-Based Information Resource Management System for Materials of Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor

摘要

In the development of advanced fast reactors, materials and coolant/ material interactions pose a critical barrier for higher temperature and longer core life designs. For sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) such as the Experimental Breeder Reactors in Idaho and the Fast Flux Test Facility in Hanford, experience has shown that qualified structural materials and fuel cladding severely limits their economic performance.Liquid sodium has been selected as the primary coolant candidate for the Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR) of the Global Nuclear Partnership (GNEP). Materials improvement has been identified as a major thrust to improve fast reactor economics. Researchers from universities, national laboratories, and related industrial participants have been continuously generating data and knowledge about materials and their interactions with coolants for the past few decades. Considering cost and time, the paradigm of designing and implementing a successful advanced nuclear system can be shifted and updated via the integration of information and internet technologies. Such efforts can be better visualized by implementing collective (centralized or distributed) data storage to serve the community with organized material data sets.This project proposes to create a modularized web-based information system with models to systematically catalog and analyze existing data, and guide the new development and testing to acquire new data. Technically speaking, information retrieval and knowledge discovery tools will be implemented for researchers with both information look-up options from material databases and technology/development gap analysis from intelligent agent and reporting components. The goal of the system is not only to provide another database, but to also create a distributable and expandable, platform-free, location-free online system for research institutes and industrial partners. Such knowledge discovery and data mining processes generally include data integration, preparation and transformation, data mining and evaluation, and data visualization. Parallel to the development of these front-end analysis tools, web-based data updating and portal administration interfaces will also be designed and developed. Data collection will start during the early stage of the project due to its time consuming nature.