NUCLEAR FUEL
International Software

SCALE is an easy-to-use computer software system for determining whether designs of nuclear facilities and transportation or storage packages meet nuclear safety standards. This ORNL-developed system is used worldwide to answer nuclear safety questions. Examples: Do storage casks containing spent nuclear fuel have enough shielding to protect employees from hazardous radiation levels? Will the cask design or arrangement of casks on a flatbed truck or railroad car prevent a criticality accident involving an uncontrolled release of energy and radiation?

In 1980 when the Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation code system was released, it was used to assess the safety of transporting nuclear material in casks. Since then, SCALE has been applied to questions about criticality safety and radiation shielding in a variety of nuclear facilities and containers for fissile and radioactive materials.

SCALE incorporates well-known computer codes, such as the KENO Monte Carlo code developed at ORNL in 1966 for criticality safety assessments. Experiments at ORNL's Critical Experiments Laboratory, led by Dixon Callihan and Joe Thomas, provided benchmark data against which the computer code calculations could be checked. Significant code enhancements and additional validation have continued.

SCALE was used to assure criticality safety in the recovery effort after fuel partially melted during the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. SCALE is used on every continent except Antarctica. ORNL researchers conducted SCALE training for users in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Latin America. Users include the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (both of which support SCALE development), as well as cask designers, fuel fabricators, reactor fuel vendors, and nuclear power plant utilities. SCALE 5, scheduled for release in 2003, will continue the tradition of providing state-of-the-art computational tools for nuclear-fuel-cycle safety analyses.

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