MCNP Perturbation Technique for Criticality Analysis

Conference · Sun Sep 17 04:00:00 EDT 1995

OSTI ID:100040

McKinney, G. W. ^[1]; Iverson, J. L. ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

The differential operator perturbation technique has been incorporated into the Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code MCNP and will become a standard feature of future releases. This feature includes first and/or second order terms of the Taylor Series expansion for response perturbations related to cross-section data (i.e., density, composition, etc.). Criticality analyses can benefit from this technique in that predicted changes in the track-length tally estimator of K_eff may be obtained for multiple perturbations in a single run. A key advantage of this method is that a precise estimate of a small change in response (i.e., < 1%) is easily obtained. This technique can also offer acceptable accuracy, to within a few percent, for up to 20-30% changes in a response.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 100040
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--95-2015; CONF-9509100--22; ON: DE95015296
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
CRITICALITY
CROSS SECTIONS
Differential Operator Perturbation Technique
FISSION
M CODES
MONTE CARLO METHOD
Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) Transport Code
NEUTRON TRANSPORT
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
PERT Card
PERTURBATION THEORY
SERIES EXPANSION
Taylor Series Expansion