A primer for criticality calculations with DANTSYS

Technical Report · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/563319· OSTI ID:563319

Busch, R D ^[1]

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1. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States). Nuclear Criticality Safety Group

With the closure of many experimental facilities, the nuclear safety analyst has to rely on computer calculations to identify safe limits for the handling and storage of fissile materials. Although deterministic methods often do not provide exact models of a system, a substantial amount of reliable information on nuclear systems can be obtained using these methods if the user understands their limitations. To guide criticality specialists in this area, the Nuclear Criticality Safety Group at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in cooperation with the Radiation Transport Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has designed a primer to help the analyst understand and use the DANTSYS deterministic transport code for nuclear criticality safety analyses. DANTSYS is the new name of the group of codes formerly known as: ONEDANT, TWODANT, TWOHEX, TWOGQ, and THREEDANT. The primer is designed to teach bu example, with each example illustrating two or three DANTSYS features useful in criticality analyses. Starting with a Quickstart chapter, the primer gives an overview of the basic requirements for DANTSYS input and allows the user to quickly run a simple criticality problem with DANTSYS. Each chapter has a list of basic objectives at the beginning identifying the goal of the chapter and the individual DANTSYS features covered in detail in the chapter example problems. On completion of the primer, it is expected that the user will be comfortable doing criticality calculations with DANTSYS and can handle 60--80% of the situations that normally arise in a facility. The primary provides a set of input files that can be selective modified by the user to fit each particular problem.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 563319
• Report Number(s): LA--13265; ON: DE98001890
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
42 ENGINEERING
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
CRITICALITY
D CODES
FISSILE MATERIALS
MANUALS
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
SAFETY ANALYSIS
STORAGE FACILITIES