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NukeIDE

An open-source desktop IDE built for nuclear simulation — geometry editors, tallies, parameter sweeps and result comparison, shipped with reproducible conda toolchains.

Role
Creator & maintainer
Period
2025 — present
Source on GitHub Get in touch
NukeIDE screenshot

The problem

Simulation work is split across a dozen tools that do not know about each other. Geometry lives in a CAD program, the deck is a text file, the run happens on a cluster, and the results come back as HDF5 that only one person knows how to read. The feedback loop for a beginner is measured in days.

The approach

NukeIDE is built on the Theia framework with an Electron shell, which buys a real desktop application with a web technology stack and a familiar extension model.

The first-class citizen is the simulation case. OpenMC Studio provides CSG and DAGMC editors side by side, so a geometry can be authored, checked and run without leaving the window. Tallies, parameter sweeps and statepoint comparison are built in rather than bolted on.

Results are visualised with three.js, which means a tallied flux map can be inspected in the same session that produced it — no notebook round-trip, no stale copy of the statepoint file.

Because the audience is researchers on machines they do not control, the toolchain is conda-forge based and the packaging pipeline runs across Linux, macOS and Windows in CI, so the environment a user gets is the environment the project was tested on.

Engineering highlights

  • CSG and DAGMC in one editor

    Both geometry routes are first-class, including the hybrid models where a CAD body is bounded by CSG surfaces. Switching representation does not mean leaving the tool.

  • Sweeps that keep their provenance

    A parameter sweep stores the parameter set next to the statepoints it produced, so the shape of a result is never separated from the inputs that shaped it.

  • Cross-platform packaging in CI

    Desktop releases are built and smoke-tested on every supported platform, which is what makes the project usable by a student on a Windows laptop and a researcher on a Linux workstation.

At a glance

Shape
Desktop (Electron)
Licence
Open source
Toolchains
conda-forge, cross-platform

Stack

  • TypeScript
  • Theia
  • Electron
  • three.js
  • conda-forge
  • OpenMC
  • DAGMC
  • GitHub Actions