A New Assembly-level Monte Carlo Neutron Transport Code for Reactor Physics Calculations

This paper presents a new assembly-level Monte Carlo neutron transport code, specifically intended for diffusion code group-constant generation and other reactor physics calculations. The code is being developed at the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), under the working title “Probabilistic Scattering Game”, or PSG. The PSG code uses a method known as Woodcock tracking to simulate neutron histories. The advantages of the method include fast simulation in complex geometries and relatively simple handling of complicated geometrical objects. The main drawback is the inability to calculate reaction rates in optically thin volumes. This narrows the field of application to calculations involving parameters integrated over large volumes. The main features of the PSG code and the Woodcock tracking method are introduced. The code is applied in three example cases, involving infinite lattices of two-dimensional LWR fuel assemblies. Comparison calculations are carried out using MCNP4C and CASMO-4E. The results reveal that the code performs quite well in the calculation cases of this study, especially when compared to MCNP. The PSG code is still under extensive development and there are both flaws in the simulation of the interaction physics and programming errors in the source code. The results presented here, however, seem very encouraging, especially considering the early development stage of the code.