SHARP could slash nuclear reactor design costs

Back in the earliest days of nuclear energy, Argonne physicists and engineers used slide rules and their own basic knowledge of reactions and physics to design nuclear power plants. Then, beginning in the early 1960s, they enlisted computers to develop designs with data from experiments and actual reactor testing. Over this entire span, Argonne built over 85 experimental reactors to test its reactor designs and computer programs – each a costly and time-consuming endeavor.