How Software Quality Assurance Standards Can Drive Industry Adoption of Open-Source Codes in Fusion Energy
Adoption of open-source physics codes and frameworks by the private fusion industry can provide an accessible and powerful alternative to closed-source commercial modeling and simulation products. However, many open-source codes are developed with a particular focus on early-stage research, which can lead to less stability, minimal documentation, fewer tutorials, and uneven application of verification and validation exercises. These limitations mean that these codes can be ill-suited for the commercialized product design needs of industry researchers and product engineers. We believe a balance can be struck between the cutting-edge development needs of public-facing research and development and the stability and assurance required of the emerging fusion industry, as it seeks to have commercial fusion energy on the grid by the 2040s. In this talk, we’ll present, as a case study, the software quality assurance (SQA) practices of the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework, developed at Idaho National Laboratory. MOOSE, developed originally for the integrated modeling of nuclear fission reactors, has been under active development since 2008 and was open-sourced in 2014. Since then, a workflow for automated testing and documentation has been developed and evolved over time to obtain compliance with the Nuclear Quality Assurance, Level 1 (NQA-1) standard. This standard is particularly important for the fission industry, which uses NQA-1-qualified modeling tools to perform evaluation and licensing of their designs for nuclear regulatory agencies. We will discuss how comprehensive SQA standards have influenced the adoption of MOOSE and MOOSE-based applications within the fission industry, and how similar SQA practices can promote open-source code adoption within the emerging fusion industry.