A weight window approach for dose rate calculations in Lead-cooled Fast Reactors with OpenMC

Abstract

This paper presents the application of a variance reduction technique for radiation shielding calculations in Lead-cooled Fast Reactors (LFRs) using the OpenMC Monte Carlo code. The study focuses on assessing the computational efficiency of the Method of Automatic Generation of Importances by Calculation (MAGIC). This technique is employed to generate weight windows for Monte Carlo simulations, aiming at enhancing the efficiency of dose rate estimations for LFRs. Through a detailed study of a LFR mock-up model, the performance differences between a MAGIC-accelerated and a non-accelerated simulation are investigated in terms of both accuracy and computational cost. The results demonstrate the benefits of the variance reduction method, showing its effectiveness in spreading particles throughout the model while improving the accuracy of Monte Carlo estimates far from the core. In addition, this work demonstrates the performances of the MAGIC method in eigenvalue calculations. This work shows an interesting optimisation of Monte Carlo simulations for LFRs and can be considered as a first milestone for newcleo’s radiation shielding studies.