NEUTRONIC DESIGN OF A COLD NEUTRON SOURCE WITH MCNP

摘要

The neutronic design of a cold neutron source (CNS) requires the use of powerful tools to model neutron transport as accurately as possible. For this purpose, nowadays, the increase in hardware calculation power makes it possible to make use of Monte Carlo techniques, even during the design stage. For design purposes, the goal is to find the optimal combination between positioning and geometry of the moderator chamber and composition of the moderator material to produce the maximum cold neutron flux at the experimental location. Close to the optimum balance, the influence of each of these parameters on the cold flux can be expected to be about 1-5%. These small effects must be discriminated from statistical errors without a strong increase of the calculation time. A short description of the calculation line, leading to a fast and reliable method to perform these optimization calculations with low statistical errors and times compatible with a design schedule is presented. Several parametric analyses of the design variables are presented in order to show how this calculation methodology works and how consistent their results are. The analysis was done during the design of the replacement research reactor (RRR) CNS for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). As a conclusion to the paper, we demonstrate the possibility to apply Monte Carlo techniques in a design project framework to obtain an optimized CNS neutronic design.