Flux and Reaction Rate Kernel Density Estimators in OpenMC

Technical Report · Thu Aug 15 04:00:00 EDT 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1090692· OSTI ID:1090692

Burke, Timothy P. ^[1]; Kiedrowski, Brian C. ^[1]; Martin, William R. ^[1]

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

Current methods for obtaining flux and reaction rate profiles in a Monte Carlo simulation rely on histogram tallies that can suffer from large uncertainties when fine detail is required. Recently, another density estimation technique has been applied to Monte Carlo radiation transport sim ulations: the Kernel Density Estimator (KDE) [Banerjee, K.]. KDEs are capable of calculating the flux at a point without the necessity of tracking particles on a spatial mesh, making KDEs ideal tools for multi-physics problems. Furthermore, KDEs allow for one collision or track length to contribute to the estimate of the flux at multiple points, circumventing the large statistical uncertainties associated with fine-mesh histogram tallies. However, KDEs have only been proven to be capable of estimating flux values at a series of points; no work has been done to estimate reaction rates or other quantities of interest. Furthermore, little work has been done in optimizing the KDE bandwidth for the energy-dependence of neutron transport simulations.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1090692
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--13-26477
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING