Lessons Learned from Open-Source Software Training Toward Expanding the Fusion Workforce

Abstract

Within the United States (U.S.), the Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives seek to accelerate fusion technology development through wide-ranging community-driven research activities that bring together industry, laboratories, research institutes, and academia. Increasing the maturity of key components and systems for future fusion power plants (FPPs) toward commercialization, will, by necessity, increase the need for knowledgeable engineers, designers, and researchers in industry capable of integrating and further improving these technologies within industry FPP concepts. Further, various modeling and simulation packages support these programs and are under-development within them to drive design iteration and the development of FPP digital twins. To derive the greatest benefit from model output and capabilities, training these same specialists will be vital. Thus, the development of effective and accessible software onboarding and professional development opportunities focused on fusion will be key to keeping the pace of growth high in the coming decade and beyond. A similar need exists within the advanced fission reactor community, driven by an ever-growing need for carbon-free baseload power for industrial and data center applications. Within the U.S. and around the world, several open-source packages and frameworks exist to support this endeavor, and two we will highlight here are the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework and OpenMC. These packages, notably, are also being utilized in the FIRE Collaboratives program. In this presentation, we will highlight the lessons learned from over 30 years of combined software development and training experience, focused on developing strong technical software foundations within the nuclear workforce, from students to professional engineers & scientists. We will connect this experience to present and emerging needs in the fusion energy community, and, finally, will outline possible paths forward to develop a large, robust, global fusion workforce.