The Advanced Nuclear Cycle Code, ANICCA, is a nuclear fuel cycle simulation code (NFCSC) that has been developed by SCK-CEN as a flexible tool for nuclear fuel cycle studies. ANICCA is able to simulate realistic scenarios and scenarios that are foreseen to be deployed in the near future.

ANICCA is being designed to carry out all the processes not directly depending on other codes, so that radioactive decay of the nuclear material and the burnup process of the nuclear fuel can be quickly and accurately executed in the code. For the irradiation process, each fuel is simulated by means of an associated prebuilt library. This library is obtained by the post-processing of an exhaustive calculation carried out by the homemade burn-up code, ALEPH. The library created, has enough information to allow ANICCA to perform the burnup process in one-step.

All the facilities involved in the cycle can be generically modelled, but they differ from each other in their processes. Examples of facilities that can be included in the cycle are:

• External or Initial Inventory: That material can be separated plutonium and minor actinides, spent fuel, depleted or reprocessed uranium, etc.
• Mining: A facility devoted to creating all the material needed for the cycle.
• Fabrication plant: Different fuel types can be produced, such as: UOX, MOX for Light Water Reactors (LWR) or Fast Reactors (FR) and ADS fuels.
• Reactor Plant: This facility produces the electricity required according to the plant specifications and the burnup of the nuclear fuel. ANICCA allows the deployment of an unlimited number of reactors or fleets.
• Reprocessing Plant: The process includes different strategies of reprocessing according to the residence time of the spent fuel.
• Repositories: These facilities store the nuclear material (or their products) temporarily or indefinitely, subjecting it to the different processes that happen in a simulation.

The main results that can be obtained by the code are: mass balances (such as fuel production, material stored, material separated, uranium required, etc.), composition vectors in facilities per isotope, elements or groups of elements (i.e.: fission products, minor actinides, heavy metal) and other results such as radiotoxicity, decay heat and "separated work units" (SWU). Additionally, ANICCA allows the calculation of the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE).