A high fidelity general purpose 3-D Monte Carlo particle transport program JMCT3.0

The Novelty

The JMCT3.0 (Joint Monte Carlo Transport 3.0) (latest version) has been coupled with depletion, thermal-hydraulics and fuel property for the simulation of reactor nuclear-hot feedback effects. Besides conducting multiphysics coupled calculations, one of JMCT3.0’s latest features is being able to work with the functions of proton, atmosphere and molecule transport. Since JMCT3.0 was developed based on the combinatorial geometry parallel infrastructure, JCOGIN, and the adaptive structured mesh infrastructure, JASMIN, it supports the geometry bodies, structured and unstructured meshes. Besides that, advanced algorithms (e.g. DD, UTD, OTF, and FCSBC) have been developed for JMCT3.0. Therefore, it is capable of simulating high-complexity device problems such as reactor physics, criticality safety analysis, radiation shielding, detector response, nuclear well logging, dosimetry calculations, and reactor nuclear-hot feedback effects. Moreover, high consistency was obtained by comparing JMCT3.0’s results and those from other state-of-the-art Monte Carlo programs like MC21, OpenMC, and KENO-VI. Future effort is being strategized to enhance the computing efficiency. The complication of uncertainty quantification and propagation of errors is an essential area to consider in the future. Furthermore, new algorithms need to be developed to reduce computing fees and JMCT is evolving progressively towards this goal.

The Background

The Monte Carlo method has given rise to the development of multiple physical programs for the study of nuclear science engineering, statistical physics, biomedicine, quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, petroleum geophysical exploration, finance, information, operational research, polymer chemistry and more. Meanwhile, a general high-performance numerical simulation program JMCT was used to simulate neutron, photon, electron, proton, light radiation, atmosphere, and molecule transport. Especially for those problems which the memory exceeds the limit of a single core or node, JMCT can easily simulate by domain decomposition. At present, JMCT can simulate extremely complicated nuclear system problems and the high-precision numerical simulation results have been obtained. JMCT serves as a crucial complement to the existing numerical simulations for nuclear science studies. It will expand continuously and enhance the facilities as well as speed up the advancement of nuclear research.

The SDG Impact

Via Monte Carlo numerical simulation, the physical quantities can easily obtain both measurable and immeasurable values, especially for some extreme conditions which are inaccessible by experiments. This indicates the necessity to keep enhancing the functions and capabilities of JMCT. Besides, the high upgradability of JMCT shows great potential to fill in the demand gap between numerical simulations and experiments. Hence, by developing JMCT3.0, this study fulfils UNSDG Goal 9: Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure.

Graphical Abstract