SALT LAKE CITY, May 6 (UPI) -- University of Utah scientists say they're using an iPhone application they designed to display medical scans to view simulations of nuclear reactor cores.
Researchers at the university's Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute say the iPhone reactor simulation allows researchers, among other things, to look at existing nuclear power plants and predict their performance under increased power.
Professor Tatjana Jevremovic, director of the Utah Nuclear Engineering Program, said, "With these modern and more detailed simulation tools, we can design new types of nuclear power plants in a faster fashion than 15 or 20 years ago."
But the scientists say don't plan on doing such work at home. While the visualization software -- an iPhone app named ImageVis3D Mobile -- is online free of charge at the Apple App Store, the reactor simulation software and data are not commercially available.
Jevremovic, postdoctoral fellow Shanjie Xiao and graduate student Xue Yang designed an interface so ImageVis3D Mobile can be used to display the results of reactor simulation software on an iPhone, iPod, iPad and other computers.
Xiao said not only can researchers simulate the university's small research reactor, "We can simulate any reactor with the simulation software package that we developed."
Jevremovic added: "Computer technology has developed rapidly, and we can do calculations and simulations we could just dream of five years ago."
