Sensitivity and perturbation analysis of alpha-eigenvalue with time-dependent Monte Carlo perturbation techniques

Abstract

Sensitivity analysis and perturbation calculation methods for prompt neutron decay constants α using the Monte Carlo method, such as iterative fission probability (IFP), differential operator sampling (DOS), and correlated sampling (CS), have been proposed thus far. However, these methods require a significant amount of memory storage. The method developed in this study applies DOS and CS techniques during a time-dependent Monte Carlo simulation for the pulsed neutron method in subcritical systems. The time variation of the neutron flux is fitted to an exponential function during the time range when the flux decays with the fundamental mode α. By applying the least squares method to the results of time-dependent DOS and CS, the sensitivity coefficients with respect to nuclear data and the change in α due to perturbation can be calculated. In contrast to the existing methods that require storing the total fission or time sources per generation over several (∼10) generations, the proposed method only needs to store the weighting coefficient of a single source particle until it dies. The additional memory storage per parameter is comparable to that of conventional time-dependent Monte Carlo simulations and much less than that of existing methods. Numerical tests for the proposed method have demonstrated the accuracy and usefulness of the time-dependent DOS and CS methods.