Development of a Coupled Depletion Perturbation Theory Methodology in Continuous-Energy Monte Carlo Depletion Simulations

Abstract

This work develops a depletion perturbation theory methodology coupled with generalized perturbation theory to produce fully coupled nuclide number density sensitivity coefficients for cross sections, initial nuclide number densities, and decay constants. The method is implemented into OpenMC, a high-fidelity Monte Carlo simulation code, utilizing continuous-energy cross sections to produced high resolution sensitivity coefficients over the energy spectrum.