Computing microscopic cross sections after Monte Carlo simulation

User Support
1

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if OpenMC was planning to add the capability to compute microscopic cross sections after the Monte Carlo simulation and not during the simulation (as it is done now via the reaction rates tallies).

Serpent for example as well as VESTA (by Wim Haeck) are both capable of computing one-group microscopic cross sections by tallying a high resolution flux spectrum during the Monte Carlo simulation and then fold it together with a multi-group cross sections (that is not weighted by the flux spectrum) to obtain a flux weighted one-group microscopic cross section. This way of computing one-group microscopic cross sections can significantly reduce the running time of the Monte Carlo simulation since all that is needed to tally is the flux spectrum.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin

2

Hi Julien,

Jose Salcedo Perez from MIT has been working on such a capability in an attempt to reduce the runtime for large burnup calculations where the cost to perform reaction rate tallies can become quite severe. He showed some very promising results at a meeting we had back in August. I’ve CCed Jose so that he can comment on the status of his work and his plans going forward.

Best regards,
Paul