With the closure of many experimental facilities, the nuclear criticality safety analyst is increasingly required to rely on computer calculations to identify safe limits for the handling and storage of fissile materials. However, the analyst may have little experience with the specific codes available at his or her facility. Usually, the codes are quite complex, black boxes capable of analyzing numerous problems with a myriad of input options. Documentation for these codes is designed to cover all the possible configurations and types of analyses but does not give much detail on any particular type of analysis. For criticality calculations, the …
continued below
Publisher Info:
Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
Place of Publication:
New Mexico
Provided By
UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
Serving as both a federal and a state depository library, the UNT Libraries Government Documents Department maintains millions of items in a variety of formats. The department is a member of the FDLP Content Partnerships Program and an Affiliated Archive of the National Archives.
Descriptive information to help identify this article.
Follow the links below to find similar items on the Digital Library.
Description
With the closure of many experimental facilities, the nuclear criticality safety analyst is increasingly required to rely on computer calculations to identify safe limits for the handling and storage of fissile materials. However, the analyst may have little experience with the specific codes available at his or her facility. Usually, the codes are quite complex, black boxes capable of analyzing numerous problems with a myriad of input options. Documentation for these codes is designed to cover all the possible configurations and types of analyses but does not give much detail on any particular type of analysis. For criticality calculations, the user of a code is primarily interested in the value of the effective multiplication factor for a system (k{sub eff}). Most codes will provide this, and truckloads of other information that may be less pertinent to criticality calculations. Based on discussions with code users in the nuclear criticality safety community, it was decided that a simple document discussing the ins and outs of criticality calculations with specific codes would be quite useful. The Transport Methods Group, XTM, at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) decided to develop a primer for criticality calculations with their Monte Carlo code, MCNP. This was a joint task between LANL with a knowledge and understanding of the nuances and capabilities of MCNP and the University of New Mexico with a knowledge and understanding of nuclear criticality safety calculations and educating first time users of neutronics calculations. The initial problem was that the MCNP manual just contained too much information. Almost everything one needs to know about MCNP can be found in the manual; the problem is that there is more information than a user requires to do a simple k{sub eff} calculation. The basic concept of the primer was to distill the manual to create a document whose only focus was criticality calculations using MCNP.
This article is part of the following collection of related materials.
Office of Scientific & Technical Information Technical Reports
Reports, articles and other documents harvested from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is the Department of Energy (DOE) office that collects, preserves, and disseminates DOE-sponsored research and development (R&D) results that are the outcomes of R&D projects or other funded activities at DOE labs and facilities nationwide and grantees at universities and other institutions.
Briesmeister, J.; Forster, R. A. & Busch, R.MCNP{sup TM} criticality primer and training experiences,
article,
September 1, 1995;
New Mexico.
(https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc619056/:
accessed May 10, 2024),
University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu;
crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.
