ASC Code Strategy - National Nuclear Security Administration

3.0 ASC National Code Strategy
As detailed in the introduction, the objectives of the IC program element are designed to realize the vision of
“simulation-enabled complex transformation,” and correspond, in a progressive fashion, to broader spheres of
application, influence, and impact. These objectives are as follows:
• Advance world-leading predictive science, providing the capability to sustain stockpile stewardship without
returning to underground nuclear testing as weapons age and we move further from the test base;
• Enable QMU-based certification, transforming the broader certification process to allow more effective and
selective use of AGEX, certification tests, flight tests, and other tests;
• Catalyze a responsive infrastructure through pervasive simulation across all aspects of the stockpile lifecycle such
as design, certification, manufacturing, SFI resolution, transportation, security, safe dismantlement, outputs and
environments, etc.;
• Enable a broadened national security mission, in which simulation tools extend beyond stockpile stewardship and
enable the next-generation mission of the Complex.
The ASC National Code Strategy itself rests on three major strategic components designed to help the national
Program achieve its four objectives, while helping to mitigate the risks associated with future program challenges.
These three major components are as follows:
1. Establish the National Simulation Portfolio for Weapons Science and Engineering, and Stockpile Certification;
2. Advance Computational Algorithms to Enable Predictive Simulation and QMU;
3. Broaden the Impact of ASC Simulation Capabilities in National Security.
In the following sections, the three major components of the ASC code strategy are presented, with the major steps of
each strategy detailed. In Appendix A, specific targets are laid out over the following six years to guide the program in
the implementation of this strategy.
1. Establish the National Simulation Portfolio for Weapons Science and Engineering,
and Stockpile Certification
This first strategic component focuses the Program’s efforts on activities necessary to our mission, while increasing
interdependence and collaboration, to establish a sustainable, predictive capability. Throughout the first 10 years of
the ASC Program, the three laboratories have largely focused on developing simulation capabilities based on their
Magnetic islands and drift-kink instability observed
in 3D large-scale fully kinetic VPIC simulations
run on the Roadrunner base system of magnetic
reconnection in electron-positron plasma.
(Los Alamos National Laboratory)
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