OpenMC: A state-of-the-art Monte Carlo code for research and development

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of OpenMC, an open source Monte Carlo particle transport code recently developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OpenMC uses continuous-energy cross sections and a constructive solid geometry representation, enabling high-fidelity modeling of nuclear reactors and other systems. Modern, portable input/output file formats are used in OpenMC: XML for input, and HDF5 for output. High performance parallel algorithms in OpenMC have demonstrated near-linear scaling to over 100,000 processors on modern supercomputers. Other topics discussed in this paper include plotting, CMFD acceleration, variance reduction, eigenvalue calculations, and software development processes.

Monte Carlo solver for UWB1 nuclear fuel depletion code

“…The state-of-art Monte Carlo codes with long history and validation include the MCNP code (MCNP, 2013) and the KENO codes (SCALE, 2011). New Monte Carlo codes were introduced in recent years: the SERPENT code (Leppänen, 2007), (Leppänen, 2013) written in C language and the OpenMC code (Romano, 2013) written in Fortran language.…”

Assessment of transient characteristics of fast reactors and influences of minor actinides using neutron transport method

“…where n is the isotope, x is the nuclear reaction, k is the smeared region, g in the energy group, σ n , x is the space dependent point-wise cross sections, and ϕ is the spaceand energy-dependent neutron flux in the full-core model. The Monte Carlo code, OpenMC [21], is applied for the flexible and low-overhead tally system. In another aspect, the hard neutron spectrum implies the strong anisotropic angular distribution in scatter reaction.…”

Selecting benchmarks for reactor simulations: An application to a lead fast reactor

“…The Super Monte Carlo Simulation Program for Nuclear and Radiation Process (SuperMC) code (Wu et al, 2015) developed at the Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology (INEST), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the OpenMC code (Romano et al, 2015) developed by the Computational Reactor Physics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are examples. These codes are usually developed with target applications in mind.…”