The OperaHPC School on Fuel Performance Codes, co-organised by POLIMI, JRC Karlsruhe, EPFL and CEA, took place from 19 to 23 January 2026 at Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy.
The school was held jointly with the TRANSURANUS training course, with several shared sessions between the two events. Together, they gathered 39 participants, PhD students and early-career professionals, and 10 lecturers from academic research organisations, industry and technical safety bodies.
From fundamentals to advanced modelling
The programme combined plenary lectures with practical, hands-on sessions. Lectures covered key aspects of fuel behaviour, including thermomechanical performance, fission gas behaviour, design-basis accidents and code validation. Advanced topics such as multidimensional modelling, mesoscale modelling and high-performance computing were addressed during practical sessions using the fuel performance codes OFFBEAT, SCIANTIX and MMM, developed within the OperaHPC project. These sessions included code installation, hands-on exercises and group-based case studies. The training was made possible by the open-source nature of the codes and the availability of new reference versions released at the end of 2025 as OperaHPC project deliverables.
Towards continued training efforts
The very positive feedback received from participants, lecturers and organisers confirmed the strong interest in practice-oriented training on fuel performance codes. It also provided valuable recommendations for future editions. On this basis, discussions are currently underway to assess the conditions for establishing the Fuel Performance Codes School as a recurring training initiative.
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