Residual Heating

User Support
1

Hello !
I’d like to get the total residual heat of my system (with delayed particles), I only manage to get the decay one. Is there a way to do that with OpenMC ?

Thanks a lot !
Justine

2

Thanks for posting Justine

If I have understood correctly you would like heat from particles like decay alpha, electrons.

Currently the code sums up all of the particle types and returns total decay heat.

However there is information in the chain_file.xml for each particle.

The decay heat function is quite new but it could be modified to return the different particle types

The source code for the decay heat function is here

So if I have understood your question then I think this is something we can add with a few changes to the decay heat function.

3

Thanks for the reply !
More precisely: the total decay heat is a good start, but I’d like the total heat, not only from decay, but also for every reaction ((n,alpha) and so on) deposited by each particle when power=0. I don’t necessarly need it to return the different particle types.
So this is indeed something I can’t get for now ?

4

@Justine.L In principle, one could combine information on the composition of a material with decay library information to create a fixed neutron source, which could then be simulated to do determine energy deposition due to (n,alpha) and other reactions. Admittedly this is not straightforward to do in OpenMC presently but is technically possible. Now, that being said, my sense is that this is probably overkill for most applications. Heat from neutron reactions (caused by neutrons emitted from decay) is likely to be very small relative to the decay heat from electrons, positrons, x-rays, and gammas.