It is always interesting to see items in the news where our software has played a role. Last week a breakthrough in nuclear research was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory‘s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF).
According to science journal Nature, “Using the world’s most powerful assembly of lasers, a team of researchers say they have, for the first time, extracted more energy from controlled nuclear fusion than was absorbed by the fuel to trigger it — crossing an important symbolic threshold on the long path toward exploiting this virtually boundless source of energy.”
AFT Arrow was used over a decade ago by LLNL engineers to help design the synthetic air cooling system for the NIF.
Cool stuff! No pun intended!
Also of recent interest is that AFT Arrow now has a Nuclear Verification and Validation package available. Read more about that here.
AFT President & Founder | ASME Fellow - Trey founded AFT in 1993. He was the original developer of AFT Fathom (including the GSC and XTS modules), AFT Arrow and AFT Impulse. He was active in software development until 2011 and still works with the development team in addition to managing AFT. He has taught hundreds of training classes on AFT’s software products in twelve countries across every populated continent. He worked previously for General Dynamics in cryogenic rocket design and Babcock & Wilcox in steam/water equipment design. He holds a BSME (1985) and MSME (1986), both from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a registered Professional Engineer.


