Challenges in Neutron Transport Analysis for Nuclear Reactor Simulations

In nuclear reactor design, the most fundamental task is to follow the neutron distribution as a function of space, direction, energy and time, in order to maintain and control the nuclear fission chain reaction. The fundamental equation governing the average behaviour of neutrons is given by the linear form of Boltzmann transport equation, which is an integro-differential equation. The core simulations involving the solution of the neutron transport equation are very CPU-time-intensive and require the best of numerical and computational schemes. It is because of this reason, most of the preliminary core design calculations are done with diffusion theory, which is a popular approximation to the transport theory. Abstract