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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Researchers use one-of-a-kind expertise and capabilities to test fuels of tomorrow
At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.
Jeffrey A. Favorite
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 287-299
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2161279
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Application of perturbation capabilities for density sensitivities in Monte Carlo radiation transport codes has been limited because changing source nuclide densities or source material densities changes the intrinsic source, and in most Monte Carlo codes, the user-input source is independent of the user-input materials. The perturbation capability then has no way of accounting for changes in the intrinsic source. This paper derives the sensitivity of a response with respect to a source nuclide density in terms of a portion due to the transport operator and a portion due to the source rate density. The Monte Carlo perturbation method computes the portion due to the transport operator, and the portion due to the source rate density is computed in postprocessing using parameters from the precomputed intrinsic source calculation. This paper derives first- and second-order sensitivities. The equations require the response to be separated by contribution from each of the sources modeled. A test problem containing several (α,n) and spontaneous fission neutron sources verifies the method.
